


Minestra Riscaldata

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: BDSM, Commands, Dom/sub Undertones, Kinbaku, M/M, Nightmares, Rope Bondage, Shibari, Submissive Hannibal, dom/sub lifestyle, dominant will, graphic murder, instructions, past relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-03-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 14:30:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3385238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Hannibal wants to be there when Will arrives, to watch his indifference slide through him like a cold wind before he allows his mind to sink, to slip, and watch him work his way back out, himself, again, and yet someone other behind his eyes.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Always a piece left, when he leaves those minds alone again, always the shadows upon shadows of memories.</i>
</p><p>Invitation, acceptance. Dominance, submission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DrJLecter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrJLecter/gifts).



> Full description of this amazing prompt in the bottom notes, but this is for the amazing [salyiha](http://salyiha.tumblr.com/), who requested a D/S fic with Will being the dominant and Hannibal the submissive.
> 
> We changed just a few things around bb, but we have tried to - otherwise - stick to your prompt entirely. We hope you like it!

He won’t ask.

He’s not certain he would be heard if he did.

Fingertips skim unpolished concrete walls. He can reach higher, now, than he could the last time he felt their coarse edges snaring against his skin - the sixth brick from the floor, rather than the second. The only light filters through warped glass windows, like rippling water frozen still, the moon reflecting off their surface and into the hallway’s depths.

He doesn’t need to ask, Hannibal tells himself now.

He knows where he is.

His touch skips tripping across the stones, feet curiously bare and cold against the floor. He’s certain he had shoes on before, even moments ago, their soles tapping a hollow staccato through the quiet building. He passes a door, as tall as he plus half, and lifts his hand as he passes by.

Fifth brick from the floor.

He hums, and the sound is swallowed into darkness.

Everyone must be sleeping, for the hallways to be so barren of the sisters’ snapped instructions and children’s footfalls in silent formations. Hannibal works his tongue against the back of his teeth in thought and looks down the hallway behind himself. Concrete walls. Wooden doors. The same window, repeating, infinitely.

He turns back to face forward, hand on the third brick high, and tries to remember when the hallway became so long, leading endlessly as if looped, the same door skipped over, the same window with its sickly watery moon. The library, he knows, he needs to find the library before they check his bed and find him missing. They will come hunting for him, then, and the hallways will be far from still - transformed into a cave of hissing snakes, sharp voices seeking him out, and sharper hands when he’s caught.

Hannibal doesn’t ask, because he can’t.

With only his dressing gown to shield him, he pushes off the second brick from the floor and runs, feet snapping against granite, throat clicking as he swallows and his lips part in mute silence. Filling his lungs with icy air until they burn, he tries to push that fire through his throat, to call for help - even if he takes a lashing for being out of bed, it’s better than if the other boys find him. No voice resonates from him, to bounce down the hallways, but the sound of his feet, racing now, hands clutched at his nightgown rather than the wall, has sent the vibrations of prey, ensnared in serpents’ senses.

They are coming, and they will find him. And the most they will hear when he finally asks _why_ is an empty gasp, before their hands smother his mouth.

Round and round the window comes, moon larger and almost melting where it hangs, and Hannibal doesn’t brush the windowsill, he needs to go, he has to go, and though his feet pull fire to his lungs as they slap over and over against the floor, the corridor gets no shorter. Then his footsteps echo, and Hannibal stops, heart pushing through his ribs, eyes wide and listening, waiting, terrified when the echo doesn’t fade but grows closer, with more and more and more feet scattering against the floor.

Echo upon echo, hissing voices louder and closer and Hannibal turns to the door he’s passed again and again to find it locked, to find it splintered and sharp against his hands as he presses to it, pushes it in, to get away, to get safe, to get somewhere other than here.

He feels cold fingers in his hair, feels them twist, and bend him and draw him back. And it’s a gasp, just one, little and strong as a scream, before his face is forced against the wood.

Hannibal jerks in bed, quick stuttered motions to untangle the endless blankets and sheets that curl over his form until they are on the ground and he lays panting by himself, alone, shaking, covered in cold sweat and trying to draw in air as though he’s been drowning. His lungs burn as though he has been, too small for his body, surely not enough to bring oxygen to his brain, surely not enough to keep himself alive.

Breath after breath rattles like the echoes in the hallway, but when Hannibal holds his breath, none answer him, and slowly, he soothes it down to shivering exhales and hissed inhales. One to every three beats of his hammering heart. And then to four.

When he reaches the count of six beats per breath, he stretches aching legs to the floor and stands with a hand against the mattress still, steadying himself from lightheadedness. For weeks, now, each night worse than the one before it, excepting those where he rejects sleep until nearly dawn, and then - exhausted - takes a few dreamless hours before rising again for work. For years, before this, nights of easy sleep, and any dreams visited far away from the orphanage. From the castle. From the cabin near the woods, covered in snow.

Hannibal knows, with a chill shudder as the air sets to sweat-damp skin, that those will be next.

But with his heart steady and cool water dripping from etched lines and dark circles beneath his eyes, he tells himself it hardly matters. They are dreams - nightmares, perhaps, but harmless to him. They change nothing. They mean nothing. Their reemergence could be tied to any number of changes in Hannibal’s life - an increased number of patients, the assistance he’s provided to the FBI. Certainly, viewing traumatic scenes often cause psychosomatic responses, including sleep disturbances.

Hannibal snorts.

He has never liked lying, especially to himself.

The cause is a known element. A problem that is yet without resolution. He brings a soft, clean towel to his face to pat it dry, and sweeps a hand back through his hair before padding back to bed to make it again. It is an issue, ongoing for a length of time now that exceeds reasonability, and it is not out of line to consider that his need to be seen and heard is a personal weakness. Better to be aware of it then, if it is, Hannibal considers as he snaps the sheets to lay flat.

Neither have spoken, beyond terse snapped conversations, and the gentle but arms-length repartee of psychiatrist and patient. Neither have dared move closer to the void that yawns between them, a hairline fissure that has spread into an abyssal gap. A rift where once the ground stood whole beneath their feet.

The bed made, Hannibal folds the sheets back neatly and slips beneath once more, and winces at the twinge in his shoulder, a spasm of pain from his physical labors earlier that night.

Two days, three perhaps, before Will has no choice but to stand before the chasm that has too long parted them.

Perhaps then he will hear the gasp, echoing in it, when he is forced to listen.

-

A red tie today, dark, almost maroon, to offset the light stitching in the suit he wears, to darken his eyes further and direct away from the bags beneath them. Hannibal watches his hands as he works the buttons on his jacket, as he spreads his palms flat against it to smooth it to perfection against his stomach, to tug the hem just enough to settle it over his shoulders.

The call had come from Jack early that morning, as expected, and Hannibal had brushed away the apologies sent his way for getting him out of bed so early - he had been awake for hours, busying himself with making coffee by hand to stop them shaking - and had agreed to meet Jack at the scene within the hour.

He had not left the kill far, no need to hide it when it was intended as an open invitation and a gentle reminder. Well within the city proper and just on the right side of the wrong side of town to appear premeditated. An orchestrated kill, odd enough to require the beautiful mind of Will Graham to examine and understand it, not enough to trigger a deeper investigation for the moment. Just fuelling the fire of an ongoing one of a killer never caught, one who perhaps never will be.

The drive is not long, and Hannibal allows Chopin for the morning, calming and slow as he slides the car through morning traffic and takes detours he has memorized to get where he needs to be without incident or delay. There is little reason to rush, the scene will not go anywhere. But Hannibal wants to be there when Will arrives, to watch his indifference slide through him like a cold wind before he allows his mind to sink, to slip, and watch him work his way back out, himself, again, and yet someone other behind his eyes.

Always a piece left, when he leaves those minds alone again, always the shadows upon shadows of memories.

Hannibal wonders what Will remembers. He knows he cannot lie and claim he doesn’t.

The wind tugs at him as he slips out of his car, parked alongside the police vehicles and nondescript agents’ sedans, as though it belongs there, despite being entirely incongruous in ostentation and cost. Spring is still brisk, this early in the season, and Hannibal is grateful that the weather has held. It would be far worse to have to do this in summer, when bloat and distortion spreads black as ink along an otherwise immaculate drawing, leaking threads of decay across its surface.

Hannibal passes through the district police, idling by with their cups of coffee as they wait their turn for the investigators to complete their survey of the scene. He is not stopped or questioned, and it plucks a smile - his first in many days - as Hannibal ducks beneath the line of yellow tape that flutters in the morning breeze.

“Doctor,” Jack intones, and Hannibal tilts his head in greeting. “Sorry again to take you away from your work -”

“No need,” Hannibal assures him, turning this way and that to scan across the assembled bodies gathered to see the one disassembled. He seeks out curled hair, perpetually uncombed, the cold glint of glasses used more as a shield than to focus sight that in truth comes all too clearly. He does not see him, and hums.

“We’re still waiting on forensics,” adds Jack, as if in answer to Hannibal’s question, and ever unable to resist studying his own work - as much now to ensure its integrity has remained intact as to feel the unfurling of pride over it - Hannibal steps further into the scene.

“May I see?”

“Just don’t touch.”

“Of course,” Hannibal nods, fighting down the pique of a smile as he ambles onward into the park, as if he does not know exactly where the scene lays in the empty warehouse. He lets the movement of others guide him, until a glimpse of porcelain skin, nearly blue in its pallor, catches his eye.

He had worried that the hapless tree dragged in its pot from outside - a small, sapling thing - would give. But the victim’s arms, themselves young and lean, are upheld still by lengths of cordage, readily available at countless hardware or outdoors supply stores. It wasn’t Hannibal’s first choice, when the piece came to him, but leather straps would be too easily tracked, especially the soft calfskin that he wished to use to keep those lithe limbs upheld, splayed in an approximation of crucifixion.

The young man’s head is bowed, his knees bent - broken, in truth - as if in submission to some force greater than himself. His lovely face is obscured by the dark hair that hangs lank as drapery around it, his foul mouth - that once muttered beneath his breath that Hannibal was _a pompous prick_ \- split to either ear and bound as if to gag his tongue from any speaking with rope. Beneath, as if he were the ripe fruit that this tree bore, his skin is split from neck to groin, opened to reveal smooth scarlet walls of muscle that once held a feast of organs, sordid crimsons and lush purples, spikes of gleaming white bone that now only peek where they were cut apart to open him.

His chest is open, bared to the world around him, and inside, he is empty.

It is immaculate, but for the damnable ropes.

Hannibal sighs, and returns with pensive steps to where Jack stands at the edge of the line.

“Do you have any theories?” Jack asks him, and he sounds exhausted, has seen enough in his life to no longer find much disturbing at all, and Hannibal slips his smile to his eyes only, allowing his lips to remain thin, pressed together as though in thought or concern.

“I am not wont to make any until the scene has been analyzed,” Hannibal says. “It seems a contained internal anger made visible, but to whom the message for, I am unsure any of us can be certain.”

“You think it’s a message?”

“I think it certainly makes a statement.” Hannibal watches Jack bring a hand up to rub his lips with a sigh before stepping back and away, pacing as he waits for forensics and Will Graham. Coming in his own car, most likely, yanked from bed when Hannibal had been but with further to travel, longer to think.

Hannibal meditates on the slick insides of the man before him, remembers the smell of bile and terror, the sharpness of the blood. Remembers beyond, the feeling of hands spread over his own chest, nails digging in just enough to suggest a tearing, a baring, that he had arched upwards towards and into, as this man had tried to squirm against. A lack of understanding, a lack of connection. Entirely too appropriate for the message as a whole, as Hannibal pulls his hands from his pockets and clasps them together in front of himself.

Outside, a car pulls up and Jack yells something to another agent in the building. The call is returned, almost wordless but intent clear. Show them through. Get everyone else out. Will first, forensics as soon as he’s done.

It is a practiced routine, a choreographed dance, and Hannibal turns on his heel to walk slowly back towards the door, head down to watch his steps, to count his breaths against them. He smells him before he sees him. No time this morning for the abominable aftershave. Just the clean sweat and familiar tang of dog fur around him. Warm flannel and wet hair after a cold shower.

Hannibal breathes deep, closes his eyes and allows the blink to linger before opening them and turning his head just enough to acknowledge Will near him. The other meets his eyes in passing, a brief thing, flickering, where once Will would hold the man pinned with just a look. Then Will is in the building and Hannibal outside it with Jack, and all he can do is listen. Watch. _See_.

Temptation tugs at him to turn, and watch the slow steps that carry Will echoing into the warehouse. The way the light illuminates his glassine eyes when he removes his glasses and lifts his gaze to take in the aging beams high overhead, a building once full of life and industry, now hollowed out and forgotten. The tight snap of Will’s jaw as he takes in the young man kneeling before him, a lone supplicant whose ribs curve like cathedral rafters over the barren chancel of his body.

Hannibal opens his eyes again, vision crimson from the golden glow of sun against his eyelids, and returns the grudging greetings of the forensics team who have appeared beside him. For a moment he regrets that his work was found so early in the day, having provided an inconvenience to Katz and Zeller, Price who occupies himself in readying their collection materials. But when Will finally emerges again, the nuisance of an early work day is forgotten as the scent of the man sweeps over him again, touched now by the first sweet blossoms of decay on the powder blue gloves that Will snaps down off his hands.

He touched, Hannibal knows, only gingerly but he touched - a sweep of fingers through clotted hair, perhaps, pressing them into stiff skin that held the imprint of his touch for minutes after he removed it. Hannibal presses his tongue between his lips, but does not speak, and to his unseen dismay, neither does Will to him.

“Dr. Lecter thinks it’s a message,” Jack murmurs, careful to keep his voice clear from the prying attentions of the local police.

Will’s mouth tightens in a grimaced smile, and he slips his glasses back onto his nose. “Dr. Lecter,” he responds, “has an astute insight.”

His words are clipped, a customary annoyance that draws no attention but from Hannibal, who studies the man with a fierce scrutiny. Will yields nothing but cold distance, and for a strange moment, it has all the sensation of looking into a mirror. “Thank you,” Hannibal responds, but Will spares him no look.

“There’s no blood around him, the thoracic cavity has been opened neat as an autopsy, scooped scrupulously clean, bowels removed,” Will rattles off, stopping when Jack interjects.

“What is the message then? The ‘to’ and ‘from’, Will.”

“To the victim,” Will answers, without hesitation. “He’s young. Nice looking, well kept. There are sexual connotations to the crime -”

“You think he was abused first?”

“No,” responds Will. “But a past relationship, something personal.”

The lies are an agony, transparent to Hannibal beyond his own knowledge of the truth, and seen in the quick movement of Will’s eyes, just a glance, but enough. He bites the inside of his mouth, presses his lips into a thoughtful expression, and hopes it hides the clenching of his teeth to hold back words that instead wither and die in his throat. And then Will speaks again, and the weight lifts so suddenly that Hannibal can do no more than remind himself to breathe.

“Someone who knew him intimately enough to bare him, open him up, and then take what made him whole away. He left him empty.” Will’s tongue parts his lips, and licks the lower between his teeth. “It’s what the killer feels happened to him.”

“Pretty nasty break-up,” Katz snorts.

“To say the least,” adds Hannibal.

Will laughs, a jarring sound for everyone and for a moment the group is entirely quiet. He clears his throat and swallows, squeezes the folded gloves in his hand and shoulders past Jack to get back to his car.

“Can we expect another like this?” Jack calls after him, and Will opens the front door of his car with a little too much force, a blatant anger, not the put upon yelling that is born of frustration that Hannibal has seen, not the grudging smile of displeasure. No. Will is angry in a way that Hannibal can feel slipping over his skin in anticipation of raking nails.

“Perhaps if he finds another lover to blame,” Will says, drawing a hand through his hair and tossing his gloves to the passenger seat. “Though I doubt there is another, with so much anger. He has probably never gotten close to anyone else again, has never allowed that vulnerability of being sliced open and peeled apart.” Will gestures back towards the warehouse.

“You will not find another like this,” Will says, and then he looks up, not past Hannibal, for a change, not through him, but meets his eyes and looks. Sees. And Hannibal can feel his muscles unfurl from their tension one by one, slow progress of a goal hard won, achieved. It is a second, less, and the connection is gone, but the words ring like a command and Hannibal cannot help but lift his chin in response. Defiant. Proud.

Will gets into his car without another word.

He could go after him. No one would think twice about it, no one would notice, if Hannibal followed Will to his car to speak with him. But for what? Hunger burns cold in his belly, for Will to tell him that he understands, to apologize, perhaps, to _speak_ beyond the wall of patient and doctor, of work associates. They cannot speak here, if Will even chooses to finally meet his eyes, there are too many ears and the earth beneath their feet is roiling with the chasm’s shuddering closer. It is too unstable now for them to move freely.

Both too close to the edge.

Hannibal sates himself on this appetizer instead. Will’s anger has an acrid, caustic quality across Hannibal’s tongue, not unpleasant in its bitterness. He can say all he likes on blaming lovers, it is entirely the truth, and Hannibal imagines that it must be difficult to accept blame when laid squarely at one’s feet. The car starts and Hannibal’s attention drifts upwards. He wonders if Will feels him still, moving inside his mind, if his hands still recall the sensation of Hannibal’s touch, palm to palm, or if they do not meet beyond the thin latex and glossy blood.

Perhaps tonight, the nightmares will not be Hannibal’s alone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I surround myself in order,” Hannibal responds. “Moreso the pleasure when indulgence is given to its decay. But these are laws of the universe, Will, not so easily held in the hands of mortal men.” He pauses, tongue parting his lips, and his eyes narrow pleasantly. “But what a terrifying possibility. Cassandra as the creator of destruction, rather than merely its herald. Do you feel responsible for me, Will?”

There is a tension, just a bare sensation honed on a predator's instinct, that slips against Hannibal’s bones and he knows, pen poised above his ledger, that Will is in the waiting room for him.

He's early. Never one to be frightfully late but never eager, and yet here he is. Most likely pacing, most likely drawing his hands over his face and through his hair, most likely reflecting the kill in his eyes, still, thinking, over-thinking, rethinking, remembering. 

Good.

Hannibal allows several moments to pass before the anticipation pulls his shoulders straight and his head up, like a puppet on a string, and Hannibal sets his pen aside, ledger closed and slipped to its corner of the table. Immaculate, practiced. He stands, fingers drawing smooth over the desktop as he follows the perimeter and makes his way to the door, fingers down to smooth his suit back in place, button it where he had undone it to sit.

Beyond the door, the profiler stands with his back to it, muscles in his shoulders bunched enough to suggest his arms are crossed, though he is not hunched over. Hannibal swallows, silent, parts his lips to speak and finds that Will interrupts him.

"Has it become a new habit, to take patients early?"

Hannibal’s eyes dart to the clock - less than five minutes, but perhaps still a few too many - and he allows a frown to flicker across his features before Will can turn to see it. The clipped tone, the personal nature of the question, forces Hannibal to ease his features despite the mild scolding.

“I heard you come in,” he answers carefully. “I’ve just finished updating a file and saw no reason to keep you waiting.”

“Or you saw reason to see me sooner than you otherwise might.”

“Only a few minutes -”

He quiets, as Will turns to him, chin lifted, rather than ducked, arms folded but loosely. It is Hannibal who avoids his gaze now with another glance to the clock, his pulse ticking in time with the small hand, until his blood outpaces it. “If you would prefer to wait -”

Will tilts his head, just a brief motion, before his hands uncurl and settle in his pockets instead.

"We have a lot to talk about,” he says instead, tone tired again, tilted at the end with an edge of sarcasm that would usually pull a smile from Hannibal but that now rests against his throat like a blade. Will waits, until Hannibal gestures him inside and goes only then, allowance for the man to have his space and command it. Within, he goes to the small side table without asking, without prompting, to pour them both a glass of wine. Nothing stronger that he can find at first glance, and he does not go looking.

"It seemed so crude," Will starts, setting Hannibal's glass to his desk for him and walking past to settle into his usual seat. “The scene yesterday."

Hannibal follows his progress with his eyes only before closing the door with a quiet click, the lock automatic.

"Crude or cruel?"

"They are all cruel," Will sighs, taking a large sip of wine before licking his lips, resting the glass on the metal handle of his chair, fingers caressing the stem almost absently. "All the twisted minds I am forced to see and predict and explain away." _And lie for._ Will lifts his eyes again, out into the middle distance, and narrows them. "Using rope must have irked you."

The insults are felt, like pressing one’s thumb against a yellowed, fading bruise to darken it, but Hannibal pays them no more mind than that. Nor does he pay mind, at least in attention, to the wine left for him on the table. The intention is to take it. That is what Will wants. And that is what he will not have, not here, no matter how vastly he seeks to occupy this space that Hannibal has made for himself.

Without him.

Without this.

He twists open again the button on his coat and seats himself slowly, dark eyes lingering on the burgundy Will holds in his hand. “It was not my first choice. An inelegant solution, but an efficient one.” A glance, upward, to where Will rubs a hand across his mouth, seeking now his own confirmation now that he has validated Will’s. Pink tongue parts lips and Hannibal adds, with a feline tilt of his head, “Did you recognize the knots?” A breath, and then a sigh, that were it not so frostbitten might have been a laugh. “Of course you did.”

Will just looks at him, so put together and pristine, beautifully presented and yet unsure, unstable in this particular moment, of how to regain himself. Will takes another drink and crosses one leg over the other, a deliberate movement that doesn't draw Hannibal's eyes but the lower lids twitch, just barely, and that is victory enough for Will.

"You were never good with words," he says. “Always determined to show me that actions spoke louder, and this was _screaming._ " Will tilts his head to mirror the motion Hannibal had made and swallows. It always reached a point, any time, together, where silence would be prevalent, both were fluent in the language of fingers and warm hands, eye contact and breath. They didn't need words.

"How _long_ you tried to use your words here," Will muses, voice low, quiet, enough to draw a brief twitch of fingers against Hannibal’s suit before they settle to stillness. "How skillfully you bent them to lies for me. Coiled and braided them to fill people's ears so they would forget the other senses. And then this."

"A gift."

"For me, in a language no one else can speak." Will finishes his wine, stands to pour himself another without waiting for permission to. When he returns, he takes the glass from the desk and sets it on the glass table by Hannibal’s side, passing slowly around and behind him before returning to his seat. "Did you finally miss me enough?"

Hannibal’s gaze lingers on the glass beside him, and he spreads his hand where it rests on his knee to stop his fingers from tightening. He refuses to raise his eyes from it when Will passes by, but draws a breath, taking in the scent of him from so very near and masking the shiver that creeps like frost across his skin in doing so.

“I want to speak with you,” Hannibal intones, “not merely at you. Does it please you to see? To know that your predictions -”

“Were merely a possibility that you saw fit to bring to reality,” shrugs Will, idling to stand in front of Hannibal, halfway between their chairs but not yet seating himself again. Hannibal’s jaw sets and it takes enough effort to snap irritation into his voice when he forces himself to raise his eyes, and cannot meet the man’s own. “You’re avoiding the question.”

“You say that I’ve lied - ”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

Hannibal blinks, and eases his expression as if beneath ice. “I have not, once - ”

“What did I ask you, Hannibal?” Will responds, one hand in his pocket, the other swirling the glass of burgundy and sending light scattering ruby across its surface. The question all but echoes in the silence between them, and Hannibal realizes too late that his fingers have tightened again, nails pressed against his trousers.

He should end this, now, call the session over and erase them from his schedule. It seems a rare misjudgment now, to have invited this back again - Will, back again, when with but a look he seizes the muscles of Hannibal’s heart as if he holds it in his fist. His eyes close in a slow blink, and he draws a breath to gather himself. To ground himself, here in this office, his career and reputation. In his suit so carefully appointed, his presence and renown. Blood beneath his nails, his potential and capability.

And before him, the man who snaps his self-attention like a matchstick no sooner than Hannibal holds it in hand. He swallows, and speaks as steadily as he can manage, “You asked me if I’ve missed you.”

Will waits, motionless, standing still before him, and Hannibal meets his gaze.

“Yes,” he answers, a breath. “Enough.”

Will’s eyes hold his, blue on dark, before he lifts his glass to drink, eyes over the rim as he takes the words in, swirls them in his mouth as he does the wine, allows them to warm him. He taps his finger against the glass and lowers it, and Hannibal can see the way his expression eases, just a little, from its rigid anger, evident and potent displeasure to something more familiar.

"Enough," Will repeats, and that, too, sounds like a command that sends ice through Hannibal's veins. Will still does not sit, and though the politeness would be soothing, the ability to host rewarding, Hannibal finds himself choking on the words to get Will to sit down.

"Was it spite?" Will asks, tone softer now, more akin to conversation than interrogation. "Never something you could not be. Never something you could not do. Did you feel the need to give my words validation? I did not seek it."

“You predicted it,” Hannibal reminds him. “But for acts of self-defense in my childhood, I had never -”

“Everything we do is a choice.”

“And I have made many,” intones Hannibal softly. “Dozens, by last count. Never so explicitly for you but - ”

“Hoping,” Will answers, and Hannibal feels his muscles begin to untangle with a gentle roll of his shoulders, inside the suit that suddenly seems ill-fitting. “Hoping for what, Hannibal? That I might show up and beg you to stop? Give you back the power you feel like I took from you?” He shakes his head, and his smile is small, but enough to settle like a knife against Hannibal’s throat. “You gave me that,” he reminds him. “And I only took what you gave me.”

“You took it and you twisted it.” Now Hannibal’s own blade sharpens, whisked against the strop of his voice.

“I said you had the _potential_ to become this Hannibal, not that you would, or that you must,” Will responds, unruffled, infuriatingly calm in the face of the anger scraping down the inside of Hannibal’s ribs.

“Perhaps I wished to make you proud of me.”

The words stop the glass before Will can set his lips against it, and Hannibal watches his breath fog against it before Will lowers it, untasted. There is something that overcomes Will, then, in increments and then more and more, like the beginning of a rain storm, drop by drop to a torrent.

"There was never a moment I was not," Will says, and the truth of it is the welcome warmth against Hannibal’s skin, less like morning, instead like the aftermath of a slap.

"For leaving?"

"For choosing to, if the situation no longer fulfilled the needs you wanted met, yes. Only you could decide to." Will does drink, then, deliberate swallows that move his throat before he ducks his head and licks his lips, and even like this, demure, tired, smaller, he could command the room and Hannibal would listen. Would follow any word to move, or go, or stay exactly where he is.

But he had not come for him, had not sought him after Hannibal had left, had not bothered to look. He had let him go like a passing season, an inevitability. A prediction whispered against damp hair in the late morning, fingers splaying Hannibal's own apart before curling them together.

Only then, by choice, does Hannibal take up the glass Will poured for him. An acquiescence, to the man’s honesty and his own, an awareness of his own submission in doing so. It runs sweet past his lips, but sours on his tongue, and he swallows it without pleasure. He has spent years telling himself that he was past this need, this bruising ache that blossoms now between his ribs. He has told himself countless times that his control was his own, not a thing that needs to be relinquished to another, until the words became meaningless and hollow, an empty denial of the freedom that this relationship once provided.

Long hours spent together, years younger, when Hannibal had not yet understood his place in the world, learning to trust that another might see his path clearer for him. Relinquishments of his own ego in asking and being granted, control yielded and held in understanding hands. In trials and errors, Hannibal had allowed himself to learn that self-reliance is not the utmost expression of one’s strength, and that in releasing it to another to guard and to guide, he found that he could breathe again.

The glass clicks against the table as he sets it down again.

“Ask.”

The word snaps Hannibal to attention, a command so simple and so entirely complicated, unheard for too many years. He sets his jaw and works his tongue against the back of his teeth, lips pressing and curling in resistance to it. Will watches, and Hannibal knows that he sees the stubbornness once worked out of him in commands given and accepted, a bondage of mind more often than of body. Hannibal works his fingers into a fist and stretches them, imagining for a moment that the ropes tied to a dead young man are once more around his wrists instead.

“Have you missed me?”

Will considers the question, the tone, the effort it had taken to ask it, and finds that he doesn’t want to, nor can he lie about it. His jaw works, a brief tension there.

“Often,” he admits, fingers smooth over the glass he holds with both hands now. In truth, the company had never been invasive, had never been taxing and had always been welcome. First drinks and talking, dinners and late, late evenings. Then seeking hands and hot mouths and inescapable need to feel the other close, to feel them tremble, to feel them come entirely alive.

Will finishes his wine again and does not go for a third, returning to settle into his seat, one foot drawn back under it, weight held in a careful balance, the other resting with the heel against the leg of the chair. Will tilts his head, regards the man before him, and Hannibal wonders what he sees now, when he looks, if he sees a monster pulling forward and tearing skin away, if he sees antlers crawling seeking bloody fingers to the sky, or if he sees him.

“This is the first work you addressed to me,” Will says, thoughtfully, before tapping his thumb quickly against his knuckles and sitting back, feigning comfort in his chair, slowly sliding his legs across the floor and folding them at the ankles. “But were they all mine?”

Hannibal shifts forward now, uncrossing his legs to set his feet flat against the floor, elbows resting on his knees. He tilts his head one way, then the other, revels in the snap of vertebrae as his neck pops. A dozen scenes, more, turn behind his eyes like slides, replicas of classical anatomy drawings, odes to nature rendered in human flesh, and this, finally, deliberately created and sent as if he’d addressed it by hand.

A love letter, he supposes, and the thought curves a smile beneath his eyes.

“It would be unfair to not give credit where it is due,” Hannibal allows. He spreads his fingers, palms out. “One often finds, in creation, that inspiration shares the same source. The well of knowledge, the muse, there are many names for it, but regardless of how one titles their inspiration, without it, one does not create.”

Will watches him, unreadable, and Hannibal envies him his scrutiny. Hannibal’s senses are sharp, a predator’s sense of smell and sight, honed to superhuman strengths. But to look at another, and know innately their innermost thoughts and motivations, while shielding one’s self from such openness, is a far rarer thing.

It was a relief, once, when they had passed the point of words. Merely by studying Hannibal’s breath and body, strained beneath bindings both real and imagined, Will knew where his mind had gone. More, he knew how to bring him back from breathlessness, curling his knuckles against the older man’s cheek and speaking his name, as ropes fell loose and Hannibal slipped back into himself once more.

“They were not all directed towards you,” Hannibal admits, fingers collapsing together once more. “But it would be an untruth to say that I did not hope you would see them, and know.”

“I saw them, I didn’t see you in them,” Will admits, setting his hands clasped against his lap. “Denial is a great blinder. I told myself you moved on and found something else to sate yourself with. I did not allow myself to consider you would take my prediction as prophecy.”

“Does your mind ever lie in what you see?” Hannibal asks him, reasonable and calm, and Will’s eyes flick to his before he can turn them away, and hold. And hold. Until their breathing matches as it once did. Involuntary hypnosis, for them both.

“The mind always lies,” Will points out, a smile skirting his lips before he allows Hannibal to look away, a brief blink to break the spell between them for a moment. “You work with it intimately, you have for years. You know it does.”

“Not yours.”

“We are the stories we live and the tales we tell ourselves,” Will responds with a shrug. “I saw something you could be. Something you could have not become had you not made certain choices. Some days I wonder if my telling you was an unstoppable catalyst.”

The words stroke against his skin, press beneath his jaw and hold him in sway, and Hannibal shakes his head to free himself of the sensation. “My destiny has always been my own,” he responds, leaning back in his chair and slipping one leg over the other, no longer seeking with open palms and bowed shoulders. His sits straight, chin raised, immaculate once more. “Your words were an illumination, spoken in the covenant of a very particular trust. But you did not force me onto this path, Will,” he says softly. “To the contrary, it is the same path I have always been on, as immutable as the progression of entropy.”

“Entropy isn’t the only immutable force in the universe,” Will suggests, and Hannibal arches a brow. “Disorder can’t exist in a vacuum. There must be an order first. Where is your order, Hannibal?”

The doctor lifts his eyes to the cavernous office that holds them in its maw, every item in it - books and files, down to the pen on his desk - in its place. Control, embodied as a tangible, and kept within an iron grip. “I surround myself in order,” he responds coolly. “Moreso the pleasure when indulgence is given to its decay. But these are laws of the universe, Will, not so easily held in the hands of mortal men.” He pauses, tongue parting his lips, and his eyes narrow pleasantly. “But what a terrifying possibility. Cassandra as the creator of destruction, rather than merely its herald. Do you feel responsible for me, Will?”

He watches Will’s eyes trace around his form, over shoulders and neck and up to his hair and down to his cheek, his jaw. It’s almost physical in its intensity and it’s only when Will looks away, lips parted to breathe, that Hannibal allows himself to, again.

“I feel a staggering amount of responsibility,” Will admits, and it’s softer, warmer than the harsh tones of accusation before. “I have since you allowed me the privilege of being responsible for you. And now, perhaps, a vestigial feeling.” Will’s smile is thin. “Perhaps I will evolve, now, knowing it is no longer needed or necessary.”

Hannibal’s head jerks towards Will before he can stop it, a snap of eyes that sharpen as if struck. It says everything without Hannibal speaking a word, despite how quickly he regains himself, eyes ducked to smooth a hand down his coat as he stands. Will’s words hold a blade to what frayed threads still remain between them and Hannibal feels his cheeks burn with the slight, his own insistences echoed back at him in his own empty voice.

He closes his eyes for long enough to button his coat, and sees behind his eyes a hallway, glimmering with watery moonlight. His lungs burn from running, always running, and Will’s voice resonates soft as a whisper in that darkness.

“You still have wine,” he notes, and Hannibal turns his eyes towards the glass.

“I do not wish for more.”

“Then I won’t force you,” Will responds, “if you’re finished. Are you?”

Another sleepless night, plagued by monstrosities that he thought long ago buried. Another dinner alone, cooking only to please himself with no one there to praise his work. Another day, month, year, ten already passed, of wanting what is now laid open to him.

In answer, Hannibal takes up the glass, and lets the wine slip past his lips.

There is an unspoken warmth from Will, when Hannibal sets the glass down, something he can feel familiar like the fit of a well-worn sweater, that suggests that Will is pleased with him. For following an instruction never explicitly issued, for doing something that Will knows is what is needed for him, for his pleasure and comfort and stability, all. Hannibal sets the glass aside, just as Will stands, hands on his knees to lever himself up before he stretches his shoulders, a deliberate roll of one, then the other, before he straightens, glances at his watch.

“Perhaps you’ll take an early night,” he suggests, adjusting his glasses on his nose. “You don’t have an appointment after me. But.. you hardly will, will you? Meticulously writing reports and filling your ledgers.”

Will’s smile is warm, for a moment entirely the one that Hannibal would wake beside, drowsy and barely conscious, seeing it float into and out of his vision before Will would lean closer to kiss him and tell him to go back to bed. He ducks his head in a nod and raises his eyes to the ceiling as he lifts it again.

“Enjoy the rest of your evening, Hannibal. Take comfort in your order.”

“Until next week,” Hannibal responds, hand against the back of his chair. From the moment Will steps to gather his coat and leave, he does not release his grip, and only when he hears the door to the building slip closed does he allow his fingers to ease, aching and pale, from the last tether stopping him from following after and asking.

He won’t ask.

But now he knows, at least, that he would be heard if he did.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In every twist that spirals through the thick hemp, Hannibal recalls its echo in his skin. Diagonal bands of red where the rope sinks against pale flesh, supportive and unyielding all at once. It seems an appropriate choice for a fisherman, to use the stuff of ships and cargo, made soft through handling and care. Will’s hands are rough, but move as carefully over the rope as if he were tying a lure.
> 
> He may as well be, Hannibal supposes.

It's dark, even with the lamps warm and casting circles to the floor. Hannibal's hand skims the smooth wall as he takes the stairs, one at a time and slow, allowing the sensation to numb his fingertips.

No rough bricks here, no endless doors, but his house feels younger, less in it and more space. Different arrangement in the bedroom and heavier curtains. There is a hollowness to the space, no echo as he sets his feet against the wooden floor, his breath sounds muted. It feels oddly comfortable, like being snowed in and warm inside.

The sound he hears is gentle, like breathing but warmer, somehow more grounded than merely air. Will is by the window, when Hannibal turns to see, hands working in a meticulous and deliberate motion, a coiling and uncoiling of his shoulders, fingers careful to untwist and unravel what he holds in his hands, and Hannibal holds his breath.

He could watch Will prepare his rope forever, so careful with it, practiced and patient. Working it soft when it is not being used, making sure it remains supple and undamaged, and the way it smells...

"Come here." Will’s words are low, almost tired, but are obeyed with long strides and a silent stop just behind him. Will leans, back enough that Hannibal steps closer to take his weight, that Will turns to press their cheeks together with a sigh, a greeting, soft and familiar.

"Your breathing is stuttering already," Will murmurs, amused, rope still turning in his hands as his fingers bend it, adjust, coil, repeat. He does not need to see what he's doing, he knows the ropes intimately. But Hannibal does.

In every twist that spirals through the thick hemp, Hannibal recalls its echo in his skin. Diagonal bands of red where the rope sinks against pale flesh, supportive and unyielding all at once. It seems an appropriate choice for a fisherman, to use the stuff of ships and cargo, made soft through handling and care. Will’s hands are rough, but move as carefully over the rope as if he were tying a lure.

He may as well be, Hannibal supposes, as he closes his eyes and tilts his nose against Will’s temple. He carries the day on him, the places and people he encountered, but above it all is the sweetness of the oil worked into the coils he holds in his hands, and Hannibal allows his heart to race.

“Breathe, Hannibal.”

He does, deeply, and swallows it down. “It is much more than you have brought before,” he notes, and parts his lips with his tongue. “May I touch it?”

“You will feel it,” Will replies, a denial with a counter offer. Hannibal has noticed that Will has a possessiveness of the ropes as some people do with finery. He cares for them, tests them, checks them, keeps them secure and well tended, and rarely, if ever, does he allow them to be touched unless he is placing them in delicate, complex coils against another’s skin.

In answer to the other comment, Will merely adds, “I would like to tie you up today. Completely immobile. One knot, several special twists of the rope to hold you still. Will you let me?”

They have had the talk before, of what is allowed and what is not, and yet, every time they start again, Will always asks again, always confirms and adjusts if necessary. The rope he turns into itself, twists the end around and around to hold it bound and turns to Hannibal further, eyes hooded and smile at the corners of them, just barely grazing his lips.

The suggestion tugs at the coils that already wrap deep inside Hannibal, gathered tight against the body of a little boy in winter, shaking not from cold or fear but anger. He averts his eyes from Will’s gaze as it settles on him, a deference as much as an avoidance, and looks towards his own hands. They seem small, suddenly, childlike and weak. He flexes them and they return to his own.

The dream is tenuous as all are, but it holds for now.

“Of course,” Hannibal answers. He tries to recall the word they chose to call a halt to the proceedings but it does not come readily. He never spoke it in their time together, Will always more aware often than Hannibal himself as to when limits were reached. Hannibal does not try to pursue what the word might have been - dreams give way when words are read or sought, and he will not need it now anyway.

“Remove your clothes and put them away.”

Will’s voice is as steady as Hannibal’s heart is not. With a brush of fingers against the younger man’s hip, Hannibal turns to work loose his tie, his shirt, his pants. All folded neatly or put away to be washed, sock garters snapped free, his underwear slipped from narrow hips.

He turns back to Will, eyes darting to the beloved rope held tenderly as the man might hold a lover, and reminds himself to breathe.

“Come here, please.” Soft, always polite, always gentle, until the rope is against skin and then it’s all sensation. Will is never cruel, he is a master of the craft, but the way he can bend the thing in his hands, tilt it just so to rub, to tickle, to press, it’s impossible to imagine that all he does is coil it and knot the rope elaborately. There has to be more than that.

A step, another, and Will ducks his head to nuzzle again, a soft touch of reassurance against Hannibal’s collarbones, lips grazing it but not kissing, before he lifts his eyes to look over the rims of his glasses.

“Hands behind your back.”

Hannibal obeys, fingers clasped just above each wrist, just grazing the sensitive inside of his elbow with his fingertips. Will moves behind him, a hand against his chest, skimming to his side, around to cup Hannibal’s elbow and hold him still. Hannibal hears the rope fall to the floor, like a swallow, hollow and still, and knows that Will stands behind him deliberately, now, where he could have prepared the rope this way before him, but chose not to.

Anticipation crawls up his spine, trickles like delicate fingertips over each vertebra as Will folds the rope, turns it to find the larks head, and steps closer. Fingers brush Hannibal’s own before the rope is looped around one wrist, careful and practiced. Three turns, always adjusted, checked, Will’s fingers between the rope and skin, before he pulls the length of it through and tightens the only knot he will use on Hannibal, tugs the rope gentle, teasing, just to watch Hannibal’s fingers splay.

The sensation is like falling, the jolt of an elevator’s movement or a missed step, sinking deep in Hannibal’s belly. He does not let himself make a sound, but for the clicking in his throat as he swallows, mouth dry. Chin against his chest, Hannibal’s hair slips into his face and there is a twitch of muscle as though to move it, and Will spreads a hand against Hannibal’s back to soothe away that flicker of tension.

Constant contact, reassurance in the warm brush of fingers - that someone is there, that Will is that someone, not the shadows that loom in the back of Hannibal’s mind that once held him in far crueler capture than this. He focuses on the press of Will’s fingers, the sound of rope whispering against itself. He cannot let those shadows near, now, or the dream will change to one that he does not want.

They have already caught him too many times to count in recent months, stealing his voice to shattered gasps as Hannibal awoke, smothered in tangled sheets.

“I missed you,” Will tells him, words pressed with warm breath against Hannibal’s shoulders as he works the rope around his other wrist, now, tethering him enough to be comfortable, not tight. Were Hannibal to try, he would be able to escape the binding easily. So far. Once he is tethered further, it would be dangerous to try.

“I was thinking of you this morning,” Will continues, kissing against the top of Hannibal’s spine before snaring an arm, secure, strong, across his front, from shoulder to rib, and holding him still, back against Will’s chest as he draws the rope deliberately across his front, over the tops of his arms and across to take with the hand that restrains him, slipping rough hemp through his fingers and over Hannibal’s skin until the man shivers. “When I left and you were still in bed. Soft hair and sleepy eyes when you opened them for me.”

Quick fingers check the tightness of the rope, its security, before quick loops, elaborate only to those who have never seen it done before, secure this loop around through the one that holds Hannibal’s wrists pinned. Another kiss, another deliberate snaring of rope across Hannibal’s front, just above where his ribs flare out, made visible by how Hannibal sucks his stomach in, holds his breath. That, too, is tugged, secured, adjusted, before Will settles a cool hand, finger by finger, over Hannibal’s eyes and tilts his head back until he gasps.

“Beautiful,” he tells him.

Hannibal leaves his head back, eyes closed beneath Will’s palm and lips parted to steady his breathing. The ropes creak across his chest when he breathes deep - he shouldn’t have held his breath when they were tightened - but it is not painful, hardly even a discomfort. When they press against him, it is in reminder that Will holds his trust as carefully as he holds the ropes that bind him, the only one that Hannibal has ever allowed to have it so entirely.

The praise eases the strain of Hannibal’s muscles, instinctive tensing under the softened cords. A strange feeling, as though he is made small by them, but no weaker - not treated as a child but cared for and protected as one should be.

As he was not.

A soft sound aches from Hannibal’s throat and he covers it with a rough laugh, delighting in the vertigo that swells pleasantly through him. Heat sinks through his body, and now the falling isn’t a fearful thing, but welcome - exciting in the uncertainty and comforted by knowing that he will be caught and held when he does let go.

Dark eyes open, just to slits, and Hannibal turns his head aside enough to see the length of rope remaining. “Will there be more?”

“There will be more,” Will tells him, voice low, delighting in the way Hannibal takes the information, moving the hand that holds the rope still gently coiled from the floor to grasp Hannibal’s fingers when they seek for his. Will draws his palm into Hannibal’s hair, now, holding it back from his face before he lets him go, gently coaxes Hannibal forward until his knees press to the bed.

“Up,” he commands softly, waits for Hannibal to obey, one hand in the halter at Hannibal’s back to keep him balanced. “Down onto your stomach, for me.”

And here, too, support and balance, when Hannibal has no use of his hands to provide his own. Vulnerable in it, helpless in it, but settling down comfortably when Will helps him, turns his head for him so Hannibal can see Will where he stands at the bedside. Will flicks the rope, a gentle touch of its ends against Hannibal’s back making him flinch in surprise, but not pain. Will’s lips quirk in a smile and he tilts his head, turns his wrist and when he flicks it again, the rope lands heavier, just enough to draw a shiver.

“Spread your knees,” he says, waits as he’s obeyed and bends to kiss the middle of Hannibal’s back in reassurance, praise. “So good for me. Lift your feet.”

 _Completely immobile_.

Hannibal twists himself against the bed, tugging experimentally at the ropes, shuddering when they seem to almost tighten in response to his movements. It is too long a hesitation, and when the rope falls against his backside again, he chokes back a small sound.

Though Hannibal is certain that Will could perform these motions in his sleep, he seems to almost move slower in drawing the ropes around Hannibal’s ankles. The tension is checked time and again, to ensure that no skin is caught between the loops as they stack and that no bones are held too tightly together. When asked, Hannibal turns his feet, one and then the other, to assure Will that there is movement and blood flow.

When asked, Hannibal remembers to breathe, and feels almost weightless when he does.

Will works the ends of the rope through the halter holding Hannibal’s arms pinned, checks the ropes, runs his fingers beneath each one, eliciting a soft moan when they lay tight against his muscles again, a sting that is not a sting, a pressure that doesn’t hurt, but Hannibal feels his nerves run with sparks at every touch.

Another word of praise, another soft hand over warm skin, and Will steps away, makes sound enough that Hannibal know where he is, shuffling and turning, clearing his throat, the gentle whisper of clothing. When he returns he stands where Hannibal can see him, strokes knuckles down his spine.

“Are you doing alright?”

Hannibal nods, swallows, lifts his eyes to Will and the younger man smiles. “You look stunning. I would tie you like this every night if it wouldn’t jar your mind as hard as this will. Work beautiful knots over you that do little more than press to skin and muscle and little pressure points you didn’t even know you had.”

More rope in Will’s hands, and he works a long knot into the middle of it, something complex and tight, something that would hold loads onto a boat, sturdy, brutal - and not against skin.

“Open,” Will tells him gently, waits for permission before Hannibal gives it by parting his lips, letting his jaw fall slack. The rope rests comfortably against his teeth before Will works the ends back behind Hannibal’s head as though to gag him, then turns his wrist and tugs. Not enough to hurt, but enough to put pressure on Hannibal’s teeth for him to move to alleviate it. Back, up, enough to arch his back and bare his throat, and Will praises him, twists the rope together with the long length of it holding his legs tied, before kissing his hair and stepping back to admire his work.

A tremor sends resonance through the ropes, and Hannibal closes his eyes. It is not the strain of it that overwhelms him - so long as he stays bent, a curve just deep enough to require his focus to maintain, the ropes do not pull. It is the helplessness of the position that shakes him. The bindings, pressing pink marks into his skin, that he cannot ignore as readily as he can those that snare far tighter inside him. It is being watched, and appreciated, for giving Will his body and in turn his mind.

His submission, asked for and yielded, with a trust that runs deep enough to slowly calm the stutter of his heart.

Hannibal’s throat jerks in a swallow, tongue held beneath the rope, mouth open. The hemp presses against him just enough that any thought to struggle or shift is erased - any thought at all, his mind and body startled into sync, and like white noise played at the same frequency, the noise cancels itself out.

Will hears the sigh that echoes in Hannibal’s body. He slackens against the cords, coiled dark and beautiful against his pale skin, his muscles eased from the rigidity he holds in him without rest but for this. A bead of sweat follows the softened muscles of his shoulders and draws a glistening line down his spine to pool against the small of his back, at the base of his ass, warmly curved and flushed pink. If Will were to speak now, Hannibal would not hear him, suspended somewhere between waking and sleep.

Hands slip through Hannibal’s hair, down over his chest with quick tugs to check the rope and tethers, smiling when the sensation draws a sound from Hannibal he can’t control. Will checks everything, over his legs and to his feet, across his wrists where he gets Hannibal to grasp his hand, release it, push against his fingers to test everything is still in working order. 

Hannibal is trembling, from the tension of ropes against him, from holding himself this way - Will flicks his eyes to his watch, counts a few more moments he can have him like this before the strain on his back will do him damage. Fingers card through hair again and draw nails down Hannibal’s tensed back, pulling sounds from him in soft, helpless succession until Will splays his palm against his ass. Nails over thighs and up his sides, gentle, tickling against his throat until Will slips one hand beneath Hannibal’s chin and works the knot loose with the other, gently lowering him to the bed again, thumb stroking fondly over the smile the rope leaves behind.

Like swimming, if one did not need to breathe air. Like flying might feel if humans were capable of it. A suspension outside one’s body, and when Will returns Hannibal to it, he is as gentle as when he freed him from it. Hannibal’s limbs feel heavy as each is returned to him, almost boneless in his pliancy, and he turns his cheek against the bed to watch Will with sleepy contentment and a soft hum.

Each foot is cradled as it’s freed, lowered to rest against the plush bedcover. Hannibal’s arms are laid beside him and he draws them up almost clumsily to his chest, turning away from Will’s gaze when it rests on him to hide the slight smile that Hannibal cannot - will not - force away. The bridge of his nose is darkened, flushed warm beneath his eyes, and he looks far younger than he is, despite never having known such peace in his youth.

Nothing is numb, there is no tingling in his fingers or toes, nothing hurts and there are no bruises. Only red lines, perfectly parallel and delicate, where the ropes touched skin, that already fade beneath Will’s warm hands as he rubs heat back into his chill skin.

The ropes are not moved away, coiled next to Hannibal on the bed for now, where he can feel them alongside Will’s hands. Not gone, not deprived and missing and empty. Hannibal hisses, pleased, when Will sets his teeth against Hannibal’s shoulder to bite a small mark there, hands pressing parallel pink marks down his back as Will draws his nails over it again, tugging unbelievable sensation from the nerves pulled to their spark and limit.

Hannibal’s mind is whirring, fight or flight with nowhere to go, nowhere to escape or twist if he had tried, hormones running rampant through him, hardening him against the bed as Will continues to touch him, kiss him, bite and nuzzle and lick over the red marks the rope has left.

“You looked so beautiful,” he whispers, setting his legs on either side of Hannibal’s hips, leaning in to knead gently against the man’s shoulders until he groans, low and long, and Will sets his fingers to the base of his neck, instead, working the tension from there, though Hannibal is limp, now, pliant and entirely blissed from this. From allowing himself to be fully taken away, and only now returned.

“Arched and coiled for me, skin growing pink around the dark rope, eyes so wide they’ve gone black, I wish you could see yourself.”

Will praises and touches, rocks his hips - still clothed - down against Hannibal’s ass until the man bends up for him, seeking, needy, trembling with pleasure.

“Tell me what you want,” Will whispers, ducking his head to kiss against Hannibal’s cheek when he turns his face to him, smiling. “Tell me, I want to give you everything, for this.”

 _You own me_.

Hannibal stretches, savoring the movement that was denied him for what felt like hours. Muscles tighten and grow lax each in turn, beneath Will’s hands that seek out any tension to work it away, but there is none, his body eased and humming in tune with the buzz inside his ears. He wonders what his patients would think, his collaborators at the opera, board members at the museum, if they knew that this is how Hannibal spends his time and finds his peace.

If they knew that he would spend all his time this way, bound and gagged, yielding and submissive, if he could.

Will doesn’t stop touching him as he waits for an answer, hands gliding over ridges of bone and smooth planes of pinked skin. A hand curls through Hannibal’s hair, fingernails against his scalp, and Hannibal tucks his grin against the bed with a shiver.

“You,” he purrs, and the relinquishment of answering Will’s commands comes easy now. “I want you to be as satisfied as you’ve made me.”

“God, I am so satisfied,” Will groans, grins, bends to part his teeth over Hannibal’s shoulder again and laugh, warm, instead of biting him, until the man squirms and Will settles his hands on either side of his hips. “Do you have any idea -”

Will’s words trail to a mumble and Hannibal arches back to hear him better, to feel him close, and Will pushes himself up on all fours, for a moment, like a cat, and turns Hannibal over to face him before leaning in to kiss him deep, lips together, tongues sliding slick. One hand works the ropes from under Hannibal, lets them fall to the floor, for now, the other cups his cheek and holds him as Will rocks down against Hannibal properly, feels his body shake and respond to him.

“I am so proud, that you would allow me to do this, so happy seeing you this way,” Will grins. “You are entirely relaxed, entirely pliant. I could pose you and you’d stay.” Another kiss, softer, gentler, and as though to prove his point, Will slips Hannibal’s arms up above his head and they stay, slack and comfortable, just against the headboard. Will brings his hand down to stroke Hannibal up, already so hard from the ropes alone, from Will’s words and praise.

“God, just look at you.”

Hannibal sighs a rough laugh, low and resonant, and rolls his hips up against Will’s fist. Pleased by the praise but so open now that it makes him almost shy, Hannibal turns aside to tuck his face against his arm, and draws a breath when Will’s fingers find his chin. He turns the older man back to face him, the command understood without needing to be spoken, and Hannibal does not turn away again.

“No one else,” Hannibal says, voice rough with disuse, “could move me as you do.” A pause, tongue pressed to part his lips into another crooked grin. “And I do so enjoy how you move me.”

Though it takes no effort to move Hannibal’s liquid limbs, it’s worth the squeeze against his thigh, spreading him with only minimal force, to hear his voice crack when he moans. His fingers flex as if still bound, arms suspended above his head and eyes forward, hooded heavily as he watches Will’s gaze darken pleasurably in return. Their gaze locks. Hannibal lifts his hips. His cock drips, a clear bead welling at the tip that slides against Will’s hand where he holds him.

“Yes,” sighs Hannibal. “Just so.”

“Do it again,” Will tells him, groaning when Hannibal arches, slides his cock through Will’s fist. Will swallows. “Again.”

Over and over until Hannibal’s thighs tremble and Will bends to find the lube, curses as he presses a laugh to Hannibal’s neck and works his pants open, kicks them off and away to the floor. Messy mouths and hot hands, Hannibal’s down now, lazy and heavy over Will’s shoulders, up to his cheek, Will’s breathy commands to ‘spread’ and ‘hold’ and ‘stay that way for me’.

Hannibal is spread with two fingers, then three, Will’s groan of pleasure mingling with Hannibal’s as he shifts, pushes deeper, chastens Hannibal softly for moving his thighs, coaxing him to spread wider still, arch his back, close his eyes and _feel this_. Will whispers kindnesses against Hannibal’s lips, nuzzles into the hands that stroke his hair, laughs softly at the things said. 

It’s intimate and soft, Will’s lips parting on a quiet groan that clicks in his throat when he finally pushes into Hannibal, one hand down against his thigh, playfully digging nails into the sensitive skin to watch Hannibal squirm, leaving lines down his leg that will fade with the next shared shower.

Hannibal curls around the man, every thrust tightening his arms around Will’s shoulders, his legs around his hips. Subsumed, he clings to the man who can bring him so far out of himself, and return him stronger than when he left. Gentle kisses, dry and soft, pepper Will’s scrubby cheek, his neck, his shoulder. His fingers tighten into the muscles working smooth beneath sun-browned skin, his toes flex and spread before he curls them pleasantly again.

Blissful oblivion gives way to dizzying pleasure, and Hannibal’s body gives way to Will. The press of the younger man’s hip bones against his thighs, the stiff cock that drives deep enough to make him gasp. He arches without being asked, familiar enough now with Will to know that he will press his hand to the small of Hannibal’s back to curve him deeper - he bares his throat to Will’s dominance, to let himself be marked there with a sucking kiss.

And he reaches, for his cock swollen thick and bouncing against his stomach with every thrust, knowing that Will will stop him.

A quick hand and laced fingers and Hannibal’s arm is over his head again, wrist turned enough to not hurt but warn, and Will bends to press lips against Hannibal’s ear.

“No,” he tells him, slowing his thrusts, pushing deep enough to furrow Hannibal’s brows, to part his lips red and slick. “Don’t touch.”

And then he continues, tilts his hips just so, catches Hannibal’s thigh with his free hand to stretch him wider, stopping when he finds that spot that makes his entire body tense up, helpless sounds drawn from his throat. Will hums, delighted, shivers at how hard Hannibal clenches around him.

“Give me your other hand,” he says, waits for the obedience, the softness and willingness of it and kisses Hannibal’s cheek, lingering and long, in praise. Then he guides it, down from his knee to the warm curve of his groin, _just there_ , and sets it still. “Hold, right there. I want you as you are, and if _you_ want something, you will ask me.”

“Cruel.”

“Impatient.”

Hannibal thins his lips, eyes narrowing in delight as he curls his fingers against his lower stomach. His cock brushes against the back of his hand, just enough friction to taunt him, and he could end it, in an instant, he could take himself in hand and with no more than a stroke, spill soaking across his belly. He shudders as Will leans back, hands against his thighs to hold him spread. The head of his cock rubs there, just there, and Hannibal groans low, a finger lifting against his own hardness -

“No,” Will tells him again, and sharp fingers catch Hannibal by the jaw. He’s grinning, but it’s a savage thing, and Hannibal could moan for it. He holds him fast, their lips tangling for a breathless instant as the bed rocks beneath, and when he leans back enough to breathe, Hannibal’s voice deepens, rough.

“May I?”

“May you what?”

He swallows. “May I touch myself?”

“Rude, Hannibal,” murmurs Will, and he releases Hannibal’s jaw to stroke it fondly. “Ask me again.”

A laugh catches Hannibal’s voice as he lets his eyes slip closed. “May I touch myself, please?”

He hears Will’s smile without needing to see it, permission softly granted. His cock is throbbing, hot to the touch, the head swollen and sensitive and it takes no more than Hannibal curling his fingers around it, Will’s cock buried harshly inside him again, for him to jerk to stuttering orgasm, body rigid. Heat floods across his fingers, and Hannibal blinks, breathless, at the ceiling above.

It’s dark, cold that only early morning brings licking against his skin where he has it bare, and for a moment, Hannibal holds his breath, trying to figure out, remember, where he is.

Same bed, same home, but there are no lamps, no warm hemp ropes, and no Will above him, coy and pleased with his control. Instead, he lies alone, one knee drawn as the other leg lies flat, and against his palm, between his legs, he is humiliatingly sticky.

Hannibal’s throat clicks as he swallows, parts his lips to allow himself to breathe again, closes his eyes as though that alone will wipe the evidence from his body, the memories from his mind. His heart tattoos spirals against his ribs and he lets it, what else is there to do? He lays still, body calming down on its own, as his mind - infuriatingly - does not slow as it used to, after such pleasure, after such touches and care and intensity.

Verily, he supposes.

He has none of those things, here.

Feet sticking to the cold floor, Hannibal pads to the bathroom. He showers, figuring he might as well with his day starting so soon, but it does little wash away the feeling of spiraled rope or tender praise, as sticky against his skin as his own shameful release. Splashing water across his face, Hannibal lets his hands press stars against his eyes.

In that bondage, there was freedom.

In this freedom, there is only bondage.

And in the control that he wrested back when Will whispered his concerns of what Hannibal made certain to become, he has felt only a dull suffocation, like hands against his throat pressing too weakly to strangle and too hard to be a comfort.

 _If you want something, you will ask me_.

Towel around his waist, Hannibal takes up his phone as he returns to the bedroom. He stands bare, looking towards the window aglow with sun as if Will might appear there, and slipping a thumb across the black screen, he recalls the word he chose so many years before. Will had insisted on it, were he to misjudge Hannibal’s limits.

He never had, and Hannibal never had to speak to make the pressure ease. But always Will reminded him that if he needed something to stop, he should use that word.

_Fleur-de-lis._

Hannibal watches the screen until the words _message sent_ fade to black.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal does not do his guest the disservice of hiding his shiver at the words. He tilts his head a little, one side, and then the other, as though to loosen the bones that feel fused together, skin that’s too tight, muscles hard as rigor mortis. He knows it well, and how to ease it - small movements, to warm the semblance of life back into a body and loosen it to pliancy, rather than severe motions that will splinter bone and tear fragile skin.
> 
> He swallows his resentment at becoming so suddenly breakable.
> 
> “May I drink?”

Hannibal does not count the seconds on the clock by the beats in the music. He doesn’t linger by the oven when he knows there is another quarter of an hour before the meal is done, within. He does not drink his second glass of wine fast enough that he barely tastes it. He does none of those things.

He licks his lips after his third glass, instead, and waits by the oven at ten minutes and the music he turns off entirely.

It is eight in the evening and dark enough outside that Hannibal can see himself reflected in the tall glass doors. Shoulders not as straight as they could be, hair just falling into his face. He barely resists the urge to adjust it, watching his posture, instead, as he lets his shoulders settle back, his chin raise, his chest fill with air before he exhales and turns away.

The doorbell goes just as Hannibal turns the oven off, dries his hands on the towel he places carefully on the counter. Clicking steps and a straight back when he gets the door, and Will, beyond it, merely raises his eyes to look over the rims of his glasses, holds the gaze.

“It’s been a while since we had dinner together.” 

Hannibal’s eyes suggest a smile, seeking out slight in Will’s words before he forces himself to stop, and step back. “A shame,” he agrees. “Though if we enjoy this one, an added benefit in knowing we have a great many to make for.”

He starts to hold out a hand to take Will’s coat, retracted when the man shoulders out of it himself.

“Make yourself comfortable,” Hannibal suggests. Forcing his gaze away from the way Will’s curls wrap around his fingers, forcing himself away from such nearness that begs him to lean closer to Will and just _breathe_ , he makes his way past towards the kitchen. “Would you care for an apéritif? I’ve a dry vermouth that would befit the meal.”

“I trust your taste,” Will says, taking his time to reset his shirt against himself before following Hannibal into the kitchen. It is just as comforting, just as warm as he remembers, and whatever Hannibal has made, smells divine. But then, it always had, it always, most likely, will. He takes in the wall of herbs - grown much larger than last time he had seen it, the shiny counters and beautifully set table, too elaborate for them both.

He’s glad, at least, for certain constants.

Will accepts his glass from Hannibal with a nod, and thinks, briefly, how Hannibal had once spent an entire evening teaching him how to properly appreciate wine, how to breathe it in, hold the smell before he even tasted the first drop of it. How to hold it against his tongue and swirl before swallowing, allowing the taste to linger on his palette. Only then to take another sip.

The night had ended with most of two bottles finished - Will needed to learn the difference between wines, after all - and sloppy kisses on the couch. Will swallows, lets his eyes linger on the glass and takes a sip without smelling it first.

Hannibal watches. He can’t help but watch. The way Will’s brows draw in at the first bitter bloom of the liquor, how his head always tilts just a little when he tries something new, as though seeking room to file this information away amongst the cluttered cabinets of his mind. His tongue presses against his lips, to absorb the curiously sweet finish, and Hannibal nearly shivers at the sight of it.

“ _Punt e Mes_. The first vermouth, developed in 1786 and virtually unchanged since.” Hannibal turns away when Will moves to the table, returning to his plating. It should be calming - drizzling béchamel across the little custards, perfectly formed, arranging the crispy fried salsify and fat cipolline mushrooms in alternating dollops that encircle the plates. A familiar control.

It is anything but, and Hannibal has to force himself to slow his hand when he finds himself more focused on tracking Will’s foot steps behind him as the man reacquaints himself with the space. He waits until he hears a chair move, and turns with plates in hand to bring to the table.

Hannibal stops.

A long moment passes, marked by the clockwork of his heart. Will sits at the head of the table, not beside as he always did before, and Hannibal forces a breath through the tightening of his throat before proceeding.

“Mushroom sformato,” he says. “A savory custard in béchamel sauce. Roasted Jerusalem artichoke. Cipolline onions in agrodolce.” The plates are settled, Will first, and then his own, pouring the wine that bubbles at the same pace as Hannibal’s pulse.

“Champagne?”

Hannibal glances towards the man, a smile crinkling his eyes. “Cava brut,” he agrees. “The only difference is the region.”

He is trying too hard, and to what end, he doesn’t know. To impress, to woo, to intimidate, all and none of those things. To convince himself that he does not need control. To trick himself into believe it is a thing to be won, rather than to be asked for and given. Careful fingers work free the button of his jacket, a rich cerulean blue checkered with shots of violet, and finally, he seats himself, using every remaining part of his willpower not to sigh as he does.

Will waits for Hannibal to take up his cutlery before taking his own, more, perhaps, for his own amusement in seeing how such an elaborate dish is even eaten. This, too, a constant, memory upon memory of Will bringing home take out when they spent time in Wolf Trap, initially because it was easier, later because it was so amusing to him to watch Hannibal’s expression collapse at the sight of it.

Some nights he had him so exhausted, Hannibal would eat anything. Will wonders if he remembers the pizza that had dripped oil down his arm that Will obligingly licked up.

The meal is exquisite, and Will does take his time to savor it, comfortable - he convinces himself - for the moment to merely taste, not talk. But he can feel the way the man next to him sits rigid, near-vibrating with the need to move, and shift, and do something, anything at all to break the stark silence.

“You outdo yourself with meals,” Will tells him, genuine praise, warm and carefully placed as he reaches for his glass, watches Hannibal over the rim of it. “I’ve missed this.Thank you.”

Hannibal lifts his glass in thanks, and waits for Will’s lips to peel softly free of the glass before sipping it himself. Sweet fruit notes permeate, subtle as early spring, and he draws his lips into his mouth to relish it before setting his glass down to continue eating.

"The preparation becomes a greater pleasure when anticipation carries it." He presses his fork into a soft onion, spilling flavor where it's pierced. "One wonders if the meal as a whole will be to their guest's liking. Beyond the quality of the cooking itself, are there particular nuances that guests prefer that can be catered to without weakening the meal itself - more salt, a distaste for peppercorns," he trails off, but a smile tugs at one corner of his mouth. "An affinity for heat, whether by excess of chili peppers or hot sauce."

Will ducks his head, amusement narrowing his eyes as he brings his napkin to his lips, and Hannibal's shoulders ease a little to see his pleasure after so long, and finally cruelly courted.

"But," Hannibal murmurs, "too often one finds that the desire to compose a meal strikes them, and they are their only company. A chance for experimentation, I suppose. One makes the most of knowing no other will taste their mistakes."

“We are also our worst critics,” Will points out, taking up his glass again. “What mistakes a chef tastes within their own work, someone treated to it would never notice. And while the chef frets and worries over their mistake, it is far from glaringly obvious to a layman.” A sip, slow, careful, before Will allows the tip of his tongue to wipe his top lip dry, a slow and deliberate motion, almost predatory in presentation, though Will’s eyes do not change.

“It is unlike you to eat alone," Will remarks, and finds Hannibal’s smile practiced and plastic in reply.

“I host many people.”

“And allow them to taste your mistakes.”

“My victories,” Hannibal corrects, but the word seems bitter on his tongue. He does not elaborate. Will does not make him. Instead he sits back, hands set against the side of the table as though to push himself away but he does not move do to so.

“Pyrrhic," Will says softly, watches the way Hannibal’s throat works to swallow, the way his lips press together before he allows them to part. “Look at me."

And Hannibal does, immediate obedience, dark eyes to blue.

“The one time you call mercy, I have not laid a hand on you,” Will says softly.

Hannibal’s fingers stretch and coil around his glass. “You have not.”

“We spent nearly two years together. Ten years passed since then. You’ve never used it.”

The wine that Hannibal sips is for function, rather than pleasure, and despite its crisp sweetness his brows knit. “There has never been a time in which I wished for something to stop. That is its intent, as I understood - to call an immediate halt to a proceeding, if it becomes overwhelming or unpleasant. To return to ourselves, and discuss.”

Will nods, his own words familiar to him despite being in another’s voice. “There’s nothing for me to stop,” he remarks, not unkindly. “What was happening?”

 _I feel a staggering amount of responsibility_.

The concern in his voice is not overbearing, but present, like warm hands against adrenaline-cool skin. His care runs deeper than seeking his own pleasure in the relationship, though he certainly found it there - a profound desire to protect the trust that was granted to him, and the man who gave it. Care that Hannibal severed, deliberately and strategically, not realizing how much of himself would be lost, held still in the compassionate control of the man who watches him now.

Hannibal thinks of the ropes, and how when he woke in an empty bed, he longed for their security, sweetly scented and warm. How his heart squeezed itself nearly to collapse in reaching for Will, and finding no one there to return him to himself.

“I was alone.”

The words are quiet, almost hollow, and Will allows them to linger, to settle. He thinks of the day Hannibal had left. Wordless and angry, hurt and proud. And Will had allowed him to go - no, he didn’t allow, leaving was never a rule to break, but he watched and he did not stop him and he should have. Now Will watches Hannibal as he meticulously builds up his mask again and finds it unstable and ill-fitting. Will could always see him.

"So was I."

But there are no words for Will to end this, no safety to call, no one to gather his limbs and hold him together. No one to wake to when the FBI started pulling him to cases, making him look and interpret and fall so deep into people, as Will had always done, but never wanted to. He had never fallen into Hannibal, not when they were together, he had promised to allow that privacy for them both, and had not fallen back on his word.

Perhaps that was why it had been so hard to see. His own willful ignorance a blindfold and a gag both. How long had Hannibal been calling?

The guilt rises like bile and, practiced, Will swallows it down.

"Ask," he says gently.

Hannibal does not do his guest the disservice of hiding his shiver at the words. He tilts his head a little, one side, and then the other, as though to loosen the bones that feel fused together, skin that’s too tight, muscles hard as rigor mortis. He knows it well, and how to ease it - small movements, to warm the semblance of life back into a body and loosen it to pliancy, rather than severe motions that will splinter bone and tear fragile skin.

He swallows his resentment at becoming so suddenly breakable.

“May I drink?”

Gentle.

“You may.”

Easeful.

“Thank you.”

The wine tastes of spring apples, fragrant and a little tart, and Hannibal presses the tip of his tongue against his lips to let it linger there. Hannibal keeps his fingers against the glass, watching the bubbles rise as the tempo of his heart slows. Minutes pass before he speaks again.

“Would you touch me?”

Will watches the tension pull painful at Hannibal's bones, wonders if perhaps he fell to fulfilling Will’s words as an animal in pain falls to violence to ease it. Broken cogs in a tired machine.

Will sets his hand on the table beside Hannibal's, fingers close but not yet brushing, and moves to make them. He resists his own shiver as Hannibal lets his body succumb to one, eyes closed and jaw tight as he swallows, splays his fingers, allows Will to draw his own up the length of them to his knuckles. Palm to cool hand and Will grasps Hannibal's wrist enough to feel his pulse, hammering and quick, alive, marvels at how slowly, deliberately, he forces it slow.

Will lifts his other hand to ghost his knuckles down one cheek, over sharp cheekbones and taut skin, down to Hannibal’s jaw that relaxes with the touch, and turns his hand as Hannibal bends to it, to cup his chin and stroke soft over his parted lips.

"Breathe," Will tells him, smile in his tone though not on his lips. “Your breathing is stuttering already."

Air draws over Will’s thumb, where it rests against Hannibal’s lips, and sighs out warm. As if flipping a switch, he opens his lungs and lets them fill, and his shoulders slump from the rigid posture he maintains at all other times.

“Good.”

Simple praise, but profound. Hannibal’s cheeks flush, dusky rose blooming over his nose, darkening his lips. He lifts his eyes to Will, hooded but bright, and wonders at the calm that pervades Will considering the turmoil of his daily life.

“Are you finished eating?” Will asks, and Hannibal nods. There is no hunger in him but for the comfort Will provides him in touch and voice, the security offered if only Hannibal is open to accept it. “Please clear the table.”

When Will lowers his hand, Hannibal stands. He buttons his jacket again, smooths it, and takes up their plates, their silverware, each movement precise not to exact control over his space but because he knows Will watches every one, and sees far more than Hannibal can help but show.

Will watches Hannibal follow his own routines, the deliberate way he sets things to the kitchen before returning for their glasses, and when he turns to the kitchen then, Will follows him, a quiet scrape of the chair legs against the floor as Will pushes in Hannibal’s and his own.

"Thank you for dinner," Will says, settles his arms crossed over the counter as he watches Hannibal turn on the tap to begin washing up. "It has been a long time since I have allowed myself the luxury of a beautiful meal."

Hannibal’s smile is briefly seen but wholly genuine, as he continues bringing his cooking materials to the sink. “It has been a long time since I’ve so anticipated company,” he admits. He rests a hand on the bottle of cava brut, the other on Will’s glass, and arches a brow.

Will, eliciting a curl of pleasure inside Hannibal’s stomach, merely waits.

“May I pour you another glass?”

"Please."

It should be tense, the short sentences and one word replies, it should bring the mood of the room to discomfort and upset, yet neither feel them. Hannibal relaxes further with every word shared between them, Will finds his commands come warm to his tongue. They do not have the laughter and fumbling of their initial beginning, but they have years of memories accumulated to soften the silence between them.

"Pour one for yourself," Will allows, taking the glass offered him, a brush of fingers against Hannibal’s own. "You may drink it when you finish."

The glass fills, the bottle set away, and Hannibal removes his jacket to set it folded over the counter, cuff links beside it, as he rolls his sleeves up, careful folds, up and up, and sets to work on the dishes. Will takes another sip of wine, comes around the counter to be closer, an assurance by proxy.

"Do you sleep?" Will asks him.

Hannibal works steadily, a mild soap fragrant in the air as precise movements scrub each dish clear to set aside in the rack. He has never trusted dishwashers, noisy things that leave residues of old food and soap, influencing the taste of future meals. The joy of consumption is in its finality, fleeting pleasure savored and soon ended - a model of how he lives his life, in truth.

He supposes there are always exceptions.

“I do,” answers Hannibal, turning his head to watch Will peripherally as he drinks.

“You sound uncertain.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

Hannibal hums. “I sleep,” he says again, “but I have stopped sleeping well. It is disturbed, almost nightly now.” Will doesn’t prompt him but with silence, Hannibal is compelled to continue. “One cannot control their thoughts so easily in sleep as they do in the day. Memories surface, unwanted, and will not leave unheard.”

He sets aside a fork, and adds softly, “I did not have them before.”

Of nightmares, Will knows more than most ever should. He remembers, too, the white noise of comfort in his mind once they both had settled in bed, marks from the ropes still over Hannibal’s skin. The man would entirely let go, and the ability to hold, to balance him, Will had found to ease his own mind as well.

He steps closer, sets the glass away, watches Hannibal put more cutlery into the rack. He sets his palm flat against the center of Hannibal’s back, between his shoulders, just grounding him, holds until the shiver passes through Hannibal’s form several times and stills. When he removes his hand, Will sets his forehead where his palm had rested, a reassurance, a softer touch.

"You do not soothe your mind, anymore," Will says softly. "You give it no permission to rest, so it mulls and remembers."

Hannibal stands almost motionless, unable to think of anything but the pressure against his back, the breath that moves over his shirt. Wary that if he were to turn, or move too suddenly, this too will vanish and he will awaken alone again. But he has not been told to stop what he’s doing, and in the knowledge that there is a task to be completed, Hannibal grounds himself in the warm water against his hands and the ground beneath his feet.

“It was calm enough, for a time.” The last plate is settled between the others, and Hannibal begins to wash out the sink itself, long steady strokes. “I found solace in my work,” he pauses, “and other activities. Enough to lose myself in, and find exhaustion by the end of the day.”

Will tilts his head, nuzzling softly.

“And then you returned, when least I expected you. I reached out, worked pieces that I hoped you might see and appreciate, but I did not consider that I might be asked to consult.” The water switches off, the kitchen suddenly silent. “And I did not dare imagine that the investigator in need of my clearance would be you.”

Will hums, knowing he does not have to admit that it came as a shock enough itself to be face to face with Hannibal in Jack’s office without warning. He knows Hannibal knows. They had reached a point, perhaps a year into their relationship, where words were not necessary. Enjoyable, yes, and they talked often and late into the night, up early in the mornings, but they did not need them. Out together, a glance from Will and he would be served a drink, ordered for, touched, stood by.

Perceptive, both, one of the other, attuned and comfortable to be.

“You grounded me as I did you, that’s how it works,” Will says, draws his forehead up until he can press his lips to Hannibal’s shirt and then he steps away, takes up his glass again, knowing Hannibal will follow him to the sitting room. The fire is not lit but it’s warm enough to not have to be. Will settles on the couch first, sets his glass to his lips before putting it aside.

“Some nights I don’t sleep,” he says. “Some nights I dream and they do more to keep me awake than not sleeping at all.”

Hannibal looks to his glass, scattering flecks of gold where the low lights disperse through the pale wine. He does not presume to take a seat yet. He isn’t sure he could force relaxation enough to do so. It takes him the length of a sip to recognize the weight in his chest as guilt, for withdrawing himself so abruptly from their agreement that it left Will as unsettled as Hannibal has been. He imagined he would pick up and carry on, a survivor in all ways, and difficult. Stubbornness pervades Will as intensely as it does Hannibal, even now as they stand quietly at distance.

“Is this wise?” Hannibal asks. “Is it even possible, I wonder, to begin again. Enough has changed, with words and actions, that it has for a decade seemed entirely untenable.” A pause, and his breath carries the pale facsimile of laughter. “I have not even asked if you desire it.”

He closes his eyes in anticipation, of the question that comes soft as a sigh against his ear.

“Ask.”

“Knowing what you know,” Hannibal murmurs, a flicker of tension between his brows, “would you have me again?”

Will considers the question, crosses one leg over the other and draws the side of his finger gently over and over his bottom lip. There is damage ingrained and damage acquired, Will does not know whether Hannibal’s killing is a desire, a compulsion now that he has started, or merely a way to cope while they are at a distance, while they are not as they were. He could ask, but he doesn’t know if he wants to know the answer. The guilt of all those bodies, all those people, is on him. His blood and his hands, his words that sparked something within this man to leave, to kill, to taste that blood and become what Will had feared to see in him.

“Would you stop?” Will asks in turn, tilting his head to look at Hannibal properly. “In time. Given the time. Given this. Would you let this go?”

Hannibal lifts his eyes, and blinks away the sensation of another behind them. Ichor thickening his blood, darkening his gaze, slowing the rhythms of his body to near stillness. He stretches, lets his head roll, and tries to ease back to rest the predator that unfurls in hearing of itself spoken. Will has only ever asked him to be truthful, and Hannibal can be no less.

“I don’t know.” He finishes his wine in a swallow that works heavy down his throat, eyes averted now, a futile concealment of what he knows Will already sees. “It has provided me a profound satisfaction, creative and culinary,” he adds, a hint of humor at least for his own pleasure. “There are few other experiences that have sated me so entirely.”

He sets his glass aside, and folds his hands together, standing tall before the younger man. “Is this a conditional agreement?” Dark eyes twitch narrower. “Are you telling me to stop?”

Will watches Hannibal from where he sits, just as he had been, no straightening of his shoulders, no raising of his chin. He does not need to, not for Hannibal to listen, not for Hannibal to regard him with the same deference as he always had. He watches the monster within him coil back into itself, watches the iron control of the man it possesses.

“I’m not telling you to stop,” Will says, and there is a visible release of tension in Hannibal’s shoulders at the words. Force is not a way to work through a problem, pride starts to push, builds to a wall with determination and stubbornness, and all things once kind are seen through that shadow, mutate and twist to something not meant or said. Will rubs against the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses and sighs, tilts his head back and swallows.

“Come here,” he asks, a gentle request, not a command, and waits for Hannibal to step closer before sitting forward, uncrossing his legs to rest hip-width apart. “If you will not seek to change me, I will not seek to change you.”

“New boundaries,” Hannibal murmurs, and a swell of nervousness - unfamiliar and welcome - rises in him. “And old understanding.” He spans his fingers against his hips, down against his legs, and without Will saying a word, he reminds himself to breathe. “The rules remain the same.”

“Yes.”

Hannibal releases a sigh, heavy and short and dizzying in the weight it releases from him. Finally, after too many years, he lets his body give way. The carpet is soft beneath his knees. His hair falls into his face and he does not lift his hands from his thighs to adjust it. His eyes close.

And he asks.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will concludes the class and leans back against his desk, watching his students as they gather their things and file past him, setting papers to his table to mark. And then he turns, enough that he can catch Hannibal’s eyes and hold them. The smile is almost feral and does not show at all on his face, it’s warming his eyes, turning the corners up, narrowing them. And then Will ducks his chin, just enough, and the instruction is as clear as if he had yelled it.
> 
> _Come here._

It is in the middle of a sentence that Will has repeated time and again to new faces before him, that he feels the familiar warmth of being watched by Hannibal Lecter. When he arrived in the class, Will cannot say, but he can feel him there, just outside of his peripheral, coat over his arms and satchel in his hands beneath.

He watches. He does not move, he does not interrupt, he does not raise his eyes to the presentation. He knows the scenes, he made them. He just looks at Will, the way his hands move when he explains a certain aspect of his behavior, the way his brows lift and his tone lingers on the edge of sarcasm and irony.

He can feel the tendrils unfurl in his chest, a sick pride as warming and as legitimate to him as the one he gets from Will’s soft praises whispered against sweaty skin.

They have talked of it, this monster within Hannibal, its antlers grown tall and sharp and black with blood when he lets the stag roam free. They have talked of it and Will has not pushed disgust against Hannibal’s choices, has not reverted to commands to get the creature to go away. There is no exorcism between them, there is a gentle acceptance, a bitterness that drips its poison once in a while that the monster can shake away.

But the marks stay. It remembers. Sometimes, it does not turn its head that way again.

Will concludes the class and leans back against his desk, watching his students as they gather their things and file past him, setting papers to his table to mark. And then he turns, enough that he can catch Hannibal’s eyes and hold them. The smile is almost feral and does not show at all on his face, it’s warming his eyes, turning the corners up, narrowing them. And then Will ducks his chin, just enough, and the instruction is as clear as if he had yelled it.

_Come here._

Hannibal’s spine pulls tall, shoulders straight, chin raised just a little. He spares a glance to the students who linger, an unintelligible murmur of voices, watches those who paired or singular approach Will’s desk, their reservation visible. And among them, Hannibal makes his way down the steep lecture hall stairs towards Will, speaking softly to a student without raising his eyes to her.

“Psychiatrists often have their own intentions, beyond the artifice of compassion,” he says, and Hannibal’s brow lifts as he stands, just near enough to hear Will’s disdain. “Just because someone’s been granted a degree doesn’t mean that they’re any less self-serving than they were to begin with.”

The student’s brows knit and Will interjects. “Ask yourself what purpose would be served by standing so staunchly on one’s credentials, in the same breath as they’re putting forward outdated ideas on subjects where they have no working knowledge.” Without raising his eyes, he shunts the folded magazine back across his desk. “And don’t believe everything you read just because someone insists it’s true. Especially when that person is Frederick Chilton.”

Hannibal would ruffle in pleasure had he feathers, sinuous delight snaking through his ribs. The student, chastened to blushing if only by the brusque tone, gathers her article and departs, and Hannibal waits to see if the next students lingering nearby will approach before intoning softly.

“Hello, Will.”

"Hannibal."

The word is filled with warmth, fondness, and Will only spares him a glance before taking another paper that is handed to him directly, not left on his desk. Hannibal watches his eyes linger on the boy who turns to go before setting his paper down atop the others.

"A welcome end to my morning," Will says, finally turning to Hannibal properly, still leaning on his desk, lower, in level and height, than Hannibal, yet the older man is entirely at attention, body angled towards Will, hands soft where they cross beneath his coat, expression warm.

"I had the time."

Will's lip quirks, just once, enough to show a white flash of teeth before he takes the stack of papers and straightens them against his thigh. He licks a finger, deliberate, and keeps his eyes on his work as he begins to count the papers handed in.

"Lunch?"

"If you like."

"I would like." Will turns, and a pen slips from the edge of the desk to the floor and Will pauses in his counting, just a breath, before continuing, not bothering to hide his smile when Hannibal bends gracefully to retrieve it.

Several weeks have passed since their agreement was struck anew, nights shared together as often as their schedules allow it. They have begun again as if it was the first time, soft commands heeded as readily as Hannibal’s inherent stubbornness has allowed, hot mouths and rough hands seeking out contact too long denied them both. Hannibal has had less time for his other activities, best achieved under cover of night, and though the itch beneath his skin has not yet faded, it is tolerable enough for now.

The pen brushes Will’s thigh as Hannibal stands again, uncoiling elegantly to replace it on the desk. “I’ve taken the liberty of preparing something simple. Sandwiches,” he murmurs, careful to keep his voice away from prying ears. “Applewood-smoked crimini mushrooms and Emmentaler on a bed of arugula, dressed in aioli. I baked the brioche last night.”

Will stands, papers tucked under his arm, his bag in the other, and Hannibal slides in his chair once he has stepped past it.

They walk side by side, Will contented to listen to Hannibal speak. Soft-toned and eloquent, keeping pace with Will’s strides down the corridor. Both work their way around students, small groups or singles, some who recognize Will, others who just watch them, their carriage and air enough to warrant the look.

"Will!" He just stops, does not turn, and only once he catches Hannibal’s eye does he draw his bottom lip between his teeth and turn with a smile.

"A day of surprise visits," he says, smiling with his mouth but less so with his eyes. Expression almost mischievous. He gives no instruction, yet the implication that Hannibal is to carry himself a certain way. "Alana."

She smiles, bright, eyes between the two of them before settling on Will again. "I'm covering some lectures."

"Daniels?"

"Daniels."

Will settles his papers before himself, crosses his arms over them.

“Hannibal,” she chimes, and he inclines his head genially as a laugh lightens her words. “What are you doing here?”

“I had a break in my day, and decided on a visit,” he answers, eyes crinkling. “I am still a student myself in many ways, and Professor Graham is a skilled teacher.”

“Taking up a second career in law enforcement?” She teases, and Hannibal ducks his head, smiling politely.

“I imagine not. One does not want to step outside their particular boundaries, after all.”

“Hannibal.”

Will’s voice sends sparks scattering like firecrackers down the older man’s spine. He rolls a shoulder to ease the feeling, and his brows lift. Without any more command between them, something in Will’s body language speaks to Hannibal clearly as if it had been spoken aloud. He offers out an arm, slipping his coat to the other, and takes the stack of assignments from Will to hold carefully against his chest.

"I admit I'm shamelessly using Hannibal," Will says, shifting his weight, hands slipping into his pockets, enough of a motion to bring Alana's eyes back to him. A redirection, she will forget the strangeness of the situation once she passes them by.

But Hannibal will not.

He will remember the cool tickle beneath his skin at being so entirely pliant, so entirely willing before not only Will but another.

"The assignment calls for a level of psychiatry I hardly remember from college. A visit becomes an unapologetic use of Hannibal's time."

"Perhaps he can make you dinner," Alana smiles, nose wrinkling in amusement. “A feast for the senses for the feast of knowledge."

"An excellent suggestion."

"You have obviously never suffered my cooking before," Will says, casting a look to Hannibal, brow up, though it is Alana he addresses.

“All that fish you catch? I’m sure it’s a far cry better than the ready-mades I keep at home,” she muses. “Ease over extravagance, I suppose.”

“I’ll have to balance that scale out again for you,” Hannibal interjects mildly, flattered by his once-student’s smile. “We’ll make plans.”

The cue is clear and she nods with a smile. “I’ll take you up on it. Don’t let me keep you from your studies, boys.”

Hannibal turns to Will as she goes, adrift in a sea of students hurrying between their classes, and Hannibal cradles the paperwork he was given closer, before extending a hand to take Will’s bag, as well. He fights down a smile, expression professionally neutral as Will shrugs it off his shoulder for him, restrained enough, he hopes, that he can keep the rush of pleasure from reddening his cheeks.

Will’s office is small - a couch beside a desk, two chairs, a bookshelf full enough that the weight curves the shelves themselves. There is an organized disorder, regimented stacks on the table and the floor, that feels familiar to Hannibal, despite having not been here before. He draws in a breath, when the door is shut behind him, and holds it when the lock snaps into place.

“The sandwiches should still be warm -”

He doesn't finish, Will’s hand, entirely gentle, grasps his hair at the back and fists it enough to tilt Hannibal’s head back, his eyes narrowing in feline pleasure.

"Papers to the table," Will tells him, voice soft, quiet, before he leans in to nuzzle behind his ear with a soft breath. "Bags to the floor, the sandwiches can wait."

"Will -"

"Now."

His hair is released and Hannibal moves like a puppet with loose strings to bend forward, setting papers meticulously to the corner of Will's desk, Will’s bag down on the floor beside it. His own he rests just behind, turns to find Will watching him.

Narrowed eyes and thick-framed glasses and Will's smile curls dangerous again, a flash of a snarl behind it before he twists a hand in Hannibal’s tie and bends him, close enough to feel his breath, for their lips to brush, but Will does not kiss him.

"Ask."

“Use me.”

The words are a gasp, ensnared against Will’s lips. Hannibal is moved, moves willingly, the door clattering when he’s shoved against it. He unbinds his heart to let it race, and his eyes close on a groan when Will’s hand wraps once tighter in his tie. His galloping pulse beats against it, and Hannibal arches forward to bring their bodies into crushing contact before he is shoved back with a laugh and a firm hand against his hip.

His clothing is in shambles already, coat dropped in a heap beside him, and Hannibal for all the world could not care less. Let them see him, disheveled and unkempt, the refined Dr. Lecter brought to disarray, lips scarlet where Will has bitten them, neck purple with the suck marks laid into his skin. Let them see him and know that he is owned, body and mind, by the man who holds him pinned with a word and moves him with a look.

Will steps close enough, free hand set against the wall, curled to draw nails over the wood, body pressed tight to Hannibal's as he breathes him in, heat and arousal and need... and beneath all that the aching for a release for his mind, aching for that numbness. Will kisses him long enough for Hannibal to moan, a low thing that suggests as much need to breathe as his wish that he didn't have to.

When Will lets him go, it is to work loose his tie, to press forehead to forehead, heavy breaths and thick swallows.

"Follow me."

Back three steps, four, to the couch that Will sinks into, languid with a groan as he holds Hannibal's gaze, sets his arms out wide against the back of it in lazy comfort. Slowly he sets one leg out wide, then the other, cock hard in his pants, obvious, and Will shifts his jaw to the side, a brief and deliberate motion, before letting his head rest back, throat bared, breathing slowed.

"Undo my pants,” he sighs, letting his head loll forward again, with a smile. "Do not suck, but you may touch."

Hannibal studies him, the expectant posture, the almost regal angle of his chin. Despite the ill-fitting trousers, snug across his erection, despite the unflattering plaid and mismatched tie and uncombed hair, he is defiant and beautiful and proud and deserving, entirely deserving, of the submission that Hannibal gives to him all too willingly. Hannibal leaves his tie loose around his collar as he approaches, head ducked and eyes raised, unable to look away.

“Shall I stand?”

Will’s eyelids slip a little lower, over blue eyes turned tumultuously dark. “However you’re comfortable.”

Stepping out of his shoes, Hannibal pushes them away with the side of his foot and kneels, settling in the space created when Will widens his thighs. The ridged line of Will’s cock rises, twitching, in response as Hannibal unbuckles Will’s belt, and unfastens his pants. His arousal is heady, almost dizzying - earthy and rich, sweat and that morning’s soap, the first hint of salty semen from the damp spot where the tip of his cock tents his boxers.

Hannibal wants to taste him, and pleasure narrows his eyes as he resists, rolling down the elastic band to let Will’s cock rise free and settle against his shirt. Soft as velvet, Hannibal grasps his thickened length, his fingers squeezing in countertime to Will’s pulse beating beneath them. He rubs his thumb beneath the head, drawing a deep breath as it swells red in response, and though he tastes the scent of it with a press of his tongue against his lips, he does not move nearer than that.

Will groans, a low and deep sound that pulls a shiver from Hannibal before him. But he remains as he is, spread and relaxed back against the couch, cock growing harder, redder, leaking in Hannibal’s capable hands. Will laughs, low, chest humming with it, and drops his head back, settling in this way.

"No," he sighs, grinning, knowing Hannibal had leaned close, not disobedient but almost masochistic in his desire for it, knowing he had parted his lips, breathed in deep enough for the smell to slick the back of his throat, a taste by proxy.

"Not your mouth," Will says, setting the flat of one shoe against Hannibal’s thigh, pressing down enough to know Hannibal straightens with the pressure. "I want your ass, now."

Will ducks his head forward again, smile narrow and pleased. "Shall I make you limp?"

Hannibal brings up his other hand to palm the head of Will’s cock, caressing as the other strokes his swollen shaft. He remains seated on his heels, but the words pull him outside himself, as though he’s watching his own body rather than inhabiting it.

“Would it please you?” He asks, forcing himself to stop from shifting away as Will’s foot pushes higher up Hannibal’s leg.

“Would it please _you_?”

Hannibal’s hips buck forward, outside of his volition, when his cock is held beneath the firm pressure of Will’s shoe set against his groin. Head bowed, and hands suddenly still, Hannibal chokes back a dry swallow and nods.

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

Toes drag against the agonizing strain of his cock.

“Yes, it would please me.”

“Hannibal.”

The older man shudders into a laugh, voice cracking into no more than a whisper. “It would please me to limp for you. Because of you. Will -”

“Ask.”

A moan curls hot as smoke from Hannibal’s lips, rubbing himself steadily now where Will’s foot holds against him, every scrape of friction collapsing stars behind his eyes.

“Will you make me limp?” Hannibal breathes, fingers trembling. “Please, Will.”

"Mm - good answer. Yes, I will." For a moment more the pressure is unrelenting, then Will shifts his foot to the floor again, holds out his hand for Hannibal, and the man leans into it, into the fingers that gently cup his face and trace his lips, as one would hold a dog's muzzle in affection.

"Up.” And Hannibal goes, obedient and trembling, leaning forward to accept the kiss Will gives him in praise, hands on either side of Will’s head against the back of the couch. "So good for me," Will sighs, genuine, affectionate and sweet, smiling at Hannibal who smiles back, another breathless laugh drawn from him as Will nuzzles their noses together.

"Pants down," he says, setting his arms back over the couch again. "Around your thighs."

He watches Hannibal obey, eyes hooded and locked with Will’s as he brings a hand down to undo his belt, to work open the button, the zipper of his tailored pants and let them slip down his thighs. He marvels at the way Will holds his control, does not look down, marvels at how his throat works in an audible swallow as his lips spread wider in a smile.

"Over my thighs," Will tells him. “Spread wide."

And this, too, is obeyed entirely without question. Beyond the door, shadowy figures walk by as someone heads for a classroom or their own office, but as Will pays them no mind, Hannibal does not either, held almost hypnotized, as a mouse would be with a cobra, by the blue eyes that watch his own. Will blinks, and Hannibal's breath leaves him in a shudder.

Warm hands up to slide his briefs from over his cock - leaking and hard already, just from this - down his ass, fabric stretched where Hannibal sits obediently spread for Will to touch and look as he pleases. Will circles his cock, a stroke, deliberate, twisting at the head, has Hannibal trembling, and then Will lets him go.

"Two fingers," Will instructs. “My mouth, or yours, you may choose."

Hannibal leans a little, rolls his hips into the calloused fingers that hold his cock, and when he collapses quaking into a kiss, it ends in a laugh, as Will turns his head aside. He brings his gaze slowly back, and Hannibal relents, relishing what nearness he is offered, their brows nearly touching.

His fingers taste of applewood, and Hannibal hums a purr against them. Shining with spit, Hannibal’s fingers push and pull against his lips, stroke against his own tongue. He seeks not the fulfillment of Will’s mouth around him but fulfillment in offering up his own subservience - a beautiful sight for Will to enjoy, and in this, a sundering pleasure through Hannibal himself, whose breath shortens as he fingers his own eager mouth.

And despite the absurdity inherent in such acts - in them, here and now, who should be nemeses but seem to be destined to find each other again and again - Hannibal wonders how he could have gone so long without this. Together as they are, those ten years seem an abstraction - an insurmountable length of time looking forward and not long at all now that they have been returned to themselves.

Time bends.

Distance shrinks.

Hannibal hollows.

And when he fills again it is with breath and blood and Will’s voice, ringing true through to his very core.

“Good.”

Will kisses Hannibal as soon as his fingers are free from his lips, and Will can. It’s gentle, surprisingly gentle considering the game, but in that, it is also entirely what it is supposed to be. They are this, to each other, never damaging, never cruel.

“Stretch yourself,” Will whispers, catching Hannibal in another kiss, smiling when he feels the tension pull and release, pull and release when Hannibal obeys, both fingers at once, deep and slow within him. “Take your time.”

And this, the give and take they both crave - Will to watch, to tell, and Hannibal to listen and do. They remain pressed close, forehead to forehead, eyes barely open and mouths closing and parting when they both need air. Outside, someone stops by the office and Will kisses Hannibal deeply, catches the back of his head with his hand to hold him still, and close, eyes on the door as the shadow looms but does not knock, waits before just going about its way.

Will laughs, breathless, against Hannibal’s mouth when he lets him go.

“Guide me in, sink down,” he tells him, quiet, eyes dark with pupil and smile brilliant as he watches the older man entirely in his power by words alone. “Then hold your hands behind your back, and move as you wish.”

A heavy click in Hannibal’s throat, as he sits closer, brings a hand back to curl around Will and stroke him.

“May I cum?”

“If you bring yourself to it,” Will tells him, grinning, and returns his hands to the back of the couch again. Reclined. Relaxed. Entirely in control.

Hannibal murmurs his understanding, just a sound, confirmation enough as he reaches back to rub his palm, fingers trailing, along the length of Will’s cock again. He has not allowed any more preparation than Hannibal provided himself. He has not asked for Hannibal’s mouth, or lube. He wants it to hurt.

The darkness inside Hannibal revels in the thought, and sates itself on pride as Hannibal positions himself to be so willingly impaled.

Hannibal’s voice is silenced on parted lips, brows knit in focus as he works himself onto Will’s cock. The stretch is sharp, spreading wide the quickly loosened muscle that surrounds Will in heat and pressure, and on his knees, trousers and briefs pulled taut between his thighs, Hannibal trembles from the resistance needed to steady his pace.

He can take it. He will. He is full enough to feel as if he will tear in half and grins at the fact that he does not, his hands coming to rest on Will’s shoulders for a moment before he reminds himself, and folds them behind his back instead.

“Like so,” the older man confirms softly, a veneer of sweat sticking his unkempt hair to his face, skin flushed rosy pink.

Will just sits back and marvels at him, taking all his willpower not to thrust up, or hold Hannibal down, or touch him at all. He watches, the way he trembles, the way he holds himself entirely poised despite the deliberate difficulties Will has set up - half dressed and stretched little, no balance, no reward of touch, or the threat of none. He is beautiful.

“Very good,” he whispers, licks his lip into his mouth and arches up, unable to stop, when Hannibal begins to move. It’s slow, building up as Hannibal finds a rhythm he can hold, finds a position, with gentle shifts and occasional squirming, that sends stars behind his eyes and fire down his thighs. Muscles screaming, already, to stop, but he continues to fuck himself against Will. 

Because he told him to.

Because he wants him to.

And because Hannibal’s mind is entirely blank now, of names or dates or places, appointments or schedules, humiliation or fear, displeasure or stubbornness. It is all gone, all wiped blissfully white as he works himself harder, closer and closer to release, taking exactly what he had asked Will to give him.

_Use me._

“Will -”

“More.” Will’s voice is shot, fingers digging into the couch hard enough to whiten his knuckles, sweat against his brow from holding back, from sitting still when Hannibal is so beautiful, so strong, so unbelievably hot above and around him.

“Yes.”

It is the only word Hannibal can manage now, the only word that matters between them. What Will asks of him, he will give. What he asks of Will, he is given in return. Pleasure and release for both, a void where they both can meet bared as they truly are, outside the confines of their bodies and the world itself. He will ache from this. He will wince for days after. He will bleed.

Hannibal laughs, the sound so free that he does not recognize his own voice.

Beneath his skin, antlers rub their velvet into sharp points that pierce him each time he impales himself. A howl from the blackness within, fed and sated and pleased by the sacrifice. Hannibal lets his head fall back and gives it voice.

 _Yes_.

They work in unison, hands clenched white and lungs burning, forwards and back, up and down. Hannibal spreads his thighs as wide as he can, pulling hard against the confining clothes so perfectly presented and now more beautiful for the disregard of them. He sinks against Will’s cock until he feels coarse hairs tickling him, and so full he can hardly breathe, he rocks and ruts against the pressure building inside him.

“Will -”

“Yes.”

“I’m -”

“Yes.”

Hannibal hunches, shoulders and back bent, head bowed, and still -

“Yes, Hannibal.”

His jaw goes slack in a silent cry, body shaking as his cock tenses and jerks, and heat spatters in bursts against Will’s stomach.

Will groans, at the heat of it, the shaking he can feel through every sinew in Hannibal’s body. He catches him before he can move his arms forward, not for disobedience but because it would numb them, leave them useless for a long time and hurt, ache, when the blood returned to them. So Will holds, gentle, against Hannibal’s elbows and bites his own release into Hannibal’s shoulder.

Together, they tremble, both overcome, both feeling the chill of adrenaline and high leave them as Will laughs against Hannibal’s neck and massages his arms gently as Hannibal unfurls them, brings them to his front at the pace Will allows, curl over his shoulders in turn to hold him as Will leans back and holds Hannibal close.

Panting become sighs, nuzzles grow to languid kisses and Will draws a hand through Hannibal’s hair to slip it from his forehead, leaning in with a smile to press his own there.

“Please make bringing me lunch a habit.”

“You’ve not even tried it yet,” Hannibal murmurs, voice muffled as he tucks his head into the crook of Will’s neck, cheek against his shoulder.

He shivers when Will’s hands slide to his back, palms running in slow lines up and down his spine. Sleep pulls at him, a contentment well beyond anything so mundane as their literal release. An awareness instead that his thoughts ring clear, simple things - that his shirt will be wrinkled. The sandwiches cold. Paperwork untouched that will need tending to. No greater needs slither beneath his skin for now, no building drumbeat of desolation that can only be satisfied with opening another and laying them bare.

He has done that, now, entirely of his own will.

And gentle hands and soft words stitch him slowly back together again.

**Author's Note:**

> [Salyiha](http://salyiha.tumblr.com/) requested the following: _something more physical (without forgetting the psychological). Definitely some D/S games and scenes in the bedroom (SMUT! BOTTOM!HANNIBAL!!), with concentrating on giving and taking. In my head Hannibal isn't that much of a masochist and Will not really a sadist, so barely any pain involved. Both will be new to this, so sort of a testing of waters. Starting with small things like Will making "suggestions" in the kitchen or in Hannibal's office and Hannibal obeying. Will starting to display dominance in his behaviour - standing too close, towering over a sitting Hannibal, guiding touches, praising/scolding language etc. I definitely want Hannibal's POV at some point. So switching POV or entirely Hannibal would be awesome._
> 
> We changed just the one thing: they are not entirely new to this, but they are new to it again. We hope that's not a dealbreaker - time and distance changes people ;)
> 
> \---=---
> 
>  **Minestra Riscaldata** : (noun) This wonderful Italian idiom redefines the meaning of comfort. It is generally used to describe a phase of a romantic relationship, the post break-up reunion.


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